Dr. Mariana Françozo is an Associate Professor of Museum Studies at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. Her research stands at the intersection of anthropology and history and focuses on the collection and circulation of indigenous objects and knowledge from Brazil to Europe, with special emphasis on the early modern period.
She is the PI of the ERC Starting Grant BRASILIAE. Indigenous Knowledge in the Making of Science: Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648). BRASILIAE takes the book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae published in 1648 by Piso and Marcgraf as its central focus. The HNB is one of the most comprehensive products of the encounter between early modern European scholarship and Brazilian indigenous knowledge. In an encyclopaedic format, it brings together information about the natural world, linguistics, and geography of Brazil as understood and experienced by indigenous Tupi peoples, enslaved Africans, Luso-Brazilians, and the Dutch colonisers. Its method of construction embodies the intercultural connections that shaped practices of knowledge production in colonial settings across the globe, and is the earliest example of such in Brazil. The BRASILIAE project investigates how indigenous knowledge was collected, registered, understood, and transformed into European science by focusing on ethnobotanics, ethnozoology, and indigenous material culture.
Teaching activities
Dr. Françozo teaches courses in the fields of museology, history of museums and collections, museum research methods, and cultural history (1500-1800).
Curriculum vitae
Dr. Françozo studied Social Anthropology and History at Unicamp (Brazil) and the University of Amsterdam. She has been a research fellow at Cedla (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Moesgaard Museum (Aarhus University, Denmark); Gotha Forschungszentrum (Erfurt University, Germany); and the National Museum of Ethnology (Leiden, The Netherlands). Between 2013-2017, Dr. Françozo was a researcher in the ERC-Synergy Project NEXUS1492.
Her research has been supported by the European Research Council, the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Leiden Global Interactions Research Profile, CEDLA- Slicher van Bath-de Jong Funds, IBERMUSEUS, Coimbra Group, FAPESP, CNPq, and Capes.
