Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Flávia Melo is Pro-Rector of Extension at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), Brazil's leading institution for research in the Amazon region, since July 2025. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Master's degree in Social Anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), both leading research universities in Brazil. As a CNPq Research Productivity Fellow (Level C), a highly competitive national research award, she serves as permanent faculty in the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at UFAM, which she coordinated from 2021 to 2023.
Her institutional trajectory reflects sustained engagement across research, teaching, and community engagement. She taught at the graduate level in Public Security at the State University of Amazonas from 2012 to 2021, served on the Research Committee of the Amazonas State Research Foundation from 2022 to 2024, and currently collaborates with UFAM's Graduate Program in Sociology. She previously held positions at the Institute of Nature and Culture from 2010 to 2020 and teaches within the Institute of Philosophy, Human Sciences and Social Studies. Within scientific policy, she served as Director of the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA), Brazil's premier academic association in the field, from 2023 to 2024, and currently sits on its Human Rights Commission. She also consults for prominent organizations including UN Women, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Amazon Catalyst for Forest Peoples Stewardship, Brazil's National Human Rights Council, and the Center for the Study of Security and Citizenship.

She directs the Observatory of Gender Violence in the Amazon Region (OVGAM), affiliated with Brazil's National Network of Women's Observatories, and collaborates with the Department of Indigenous Women of the Rio Negro Basin and the State Council on Women's Rights. She integrates international and transdisciplinary research networks, including the National Institute for Science and Technology (INCT) on Violence, Power and Public Security, the Network on Financialization Technologies, and the Cosmopolitics of Care at the End of the World project. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, women's indebtedness, anti-gender movements, and their intersections with social protection policies, public security, and frontier processes in the Amazon. She is currently organizing an edited volume titled State and Parastate Violence in the Amazon, to be published by the Brazilian Anthropological Association with support from the Ford Foundation in late 2026.