Nomination: Ruben Caixeta, as host, and Eduardo Vargas, as co-host, both from the Department of Anthropology and Archeology (Fafich/UFMG).
Period: May 9 to 25, 2005 and May 3, 2006
Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro was born on April 19, 1951, in Rio de Janeiro. He studied Social Sciences at PUC-RJ. In 1974, he entered the Postgraduate Program at the National Museum (UFRJ) with a master’s project in urban anthropology. In 1976, a brief visit to an indigenous people, the Yawalapíti, diverted him to indigenous ethnology. He finished his master’s degree in 1977, under the guidance of Roberto DaMatta, with a dissertation on the Arawak people of the Alto Xingu. In 1978, he became a professor at the National Museum, where he is now an assistant professor of ethnology. He obtained his doctorate from the same institution in 1984, with a thesis on the cosmology of the Araweté, a Tupi-Guarani people from Pará, with whom he lived in 1981-82 and with whom he has remained in contact since then. The thesis, awarded by the National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS), was published in 1986 (in Brazil) and in 1992 (in the USA).