Antonio José Bacelar da Silva earned his Ph.D. in Linguistic and Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona in December 2012. He also holds an M.A. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Before joining the Center for Latin America Studies at the University of Arizona, he was a CAPES (Brazil) Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in the Graduate Studies in Language and Culture at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Salvador, Brazil) from 2014-2016. During that period, he conducted ethnographic research on the impact of electoral campaigning with a race appeal on Afro-Brazilian voters in Salvador. Funded by CAPES and a Post-Ph.D. Wenner-Gren grant, this study focuses on Afro-Brazilians’ struggle to reconcile Brazil’s dominant ideology of race mixing, the obligations of liberal citizenship (to treat people as equal citizens), and government policies on affirmative action.

He is currently interested in the intersections of race, class, and citizenship on democratic participation in and beyond Brazil. His teaching and research interests also include social theory, qualitative research methods, language and culture, identity (race, gender, class), language ideology and inequality.