Julia Sauma

Staff details

Position Lecturer
Department Anthropology
Email j.sauma (@gold.ac.uk)
Julia Sauma

Julia Sauma (she/her) is a Brazilian-British and Hard of Hearing researcher who investigates how collective life is maintained within and against violent extractive structures and institutions in metropolitan and frontier contexts in Brazil and the UK. She is particularly interested in the reshaping of self and collectivity that ensures the permanence of affective-ecological refuges. For the last eighteen years, she has been working with Amazonian quilombo (maroon) families from the Erepecuru River (Pará State, Brazil) to create reflections about the diverse work involved in maintaining refuges. More recently Julia has turned her attention to thinking about how collective spaces are sought, built and lost by Deaf and Hard of Hearing people. Julia’s work also investigates childhood and education, race and ethnicity, myth and memory, kinship and gender, disability and the body, translation and the place of miscommunication and disagreement in the making of collective knowledge.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD in Anthropology, University College London 2014
  • MA in Social Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro 2007

Teaching and Supervision

Research interests

As well as publishing academic and policy-oriented pieces, I explore what it means to be collective through performance, walks, chance creations and collaborations.

Antiphonic Multi-being (2019): https://aasgroup.net/event/antiphonic-multi-being/

A Solstice Mushing (2019): https://aasgroup.net/event/fungal-mumming/

Publications and research outputs

Article

Porto, Renan and Sauma, Julia F.. 2022. The End Begins. Third Text Online,

Sauma, Julia F.. 2021. The Body Perfect: On Disability, Experience and the Aesthetics of Expertise. Teaching Anthropology, 10(1), pp. 71-75. ISSN 2053-9843

Scott, D.; Pires, R. Brittes W. and Sauma, Julia F.. 2017. [Translation] Aquele evento, esta memória: notas sobre a antropologia das diásporas africanas no Novo Mundo. Ilha Revista de Antropologia, 19(2), pp. 277-312. ISSN 2175-8034

Pazzarelli, F.; Sauma, Julia F. and Hirose, M. B.. 2017. Apresentacao ao Dossie: (Contra)Mesticagens Amerindias e Afro-Americanas. R@U: Revista de Antropologia da UFSCAR, 9(2), pp. 9-10. ISSN 2175-4705

Sauma, Julia F.. 2016. Palavras carnais: sobre re-lembrar e re-esquecer, ser e não ser, entre os Filhos do Erepecuru. Revista de Antropologia, 59(3), pp. 150-173. ISSN 1678-9857

Sauma, Julia F.. 2014. Entrosar-se, uma reflexão etnográfica afroindígena. Cadernos de Campo, 23, pp. 257-270. ISSN 0104-5679

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo; Sauma, Julia F. and Holbraad, Martin. 2013. Translation: The relative native. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), pp. 473-502. ISSN 2575-1433

Sauma, Julia F.. 2008. Street encounters: betrayal and belonging in youth gangs. Public Policy Research, 15(1), pp. 32-35. ISSN 1744-5396

Sauma, Julia F.. 2006. Encontros cartografados: reflexões sobre encontros entre meninos e educadores de rua. Cadernos de Campo, 15(14-15), pp. 41-63. ISSN 0104-5679

Book Section

Sauma, Julia F.. 2024. Performing Normal: Deafness, intersectionality and academic exhaustion. In: Kelly Fagan Robinson; Mark T. Carew and Nora Ellen Groce, eds. Inaccessible Access: Rethinking Disability Inclusion in Academic Knowledge Creation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9781978841468

Sauma, Julia F.. 2019. Moramos no mundo dos invisíveis: sobreposição, ruptura e movimento em uma área coletiva quilombola. In: , ed. Paisagens Evanescentes: estudos sobre a percepção das transformações nas paisagens pelos moradores dos rios amazônicos. Belém (Brazil), Paris (France): NAEA, pp. 115-132. ISBN 9788571431836

Sauma, Julia F.. 2015. Consenso Unanime: Movimentos pela Tranquilidade e a Sobreposicao de Pensamentos entre os Coletivos Quilombolas de Oriximina. In: , ed. Entre Aguas Bravas e Mansas: Indios e Quilombolas em Oriximina. Sao Paulo, Brazil: CPI-SP & Iepe, pp. 235-251. ISBN 9788598046181

Edited Book

Holbraad, M.; Kapferer, B. and Sauma, Julia F., eds. 2019. Ruptures: Anthropologies of discontinuity in times of turmoil. London: UCL Press. ISBN 9781787356184

Edited Journal

Gibson, Lydia and Sauma, Julia F., eds. 2021. Decolonising Anthropology - what's new?, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, . 1359-0987

Pazzarelli, F.; Sauma, Julia F. and Hirose, M. B., eds. 2017. (Contra)Mesticagens Amerindias e Afro-Americanas, R@U: Revista de Antropologia da UFSCAR, 9(2). 2175-4705

Thesis

Sauma, Julia F.. 2014. The Deep and the Erepecuru: Tracing Transgressions in an Amazonian Quilombola Territory. Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London)

Further profile content

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups

Research projects

2020: Extort: Anthropologies of Extortion
ERC Advanced Grant, PI: Professor Lucia Michelutti

Conferences and talks

2022: What is the Work of Anthropology? Who is Included?

Office Hours (Academic Year 2023-24)

Wednesdays 10am-12pm (book a slot via this link: http://tinyurl.com/Julia-Sauma-Office-Hours).