Marta Machado

Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Master and Phd Programs at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Law School in Sao Paulo

Marta Machado received her Master’s degree (2004) and PhD (2007) in Philosophy and Theory of Law at University of Sao Paulo. During her Phd, she has been visiting researcher at the Barcelona University (Philosophy of Law Department) and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin (Capes) and at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. She has been visiting professor at the University of Toronto and at Columbia Law School (2017). She’s currently senior researcher at the CEBRAP; global fellow at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation (Univivesity of Bergen); Fellow at the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, University of Toronto School; associate researcher at the Oxford Human Rights Hub and one of the principal investigators at the Maria Sibylla Merian International Center for Latin America Conviviality in Unequal Societies – MECILA.

Her research is located in the inter-disciplinary field of Law and Legal-Sociology and focuses on the relations between social movements and Law. She is particularly interested in investigating the ambivalent and disputable role Law plays in this relation. She’s currently working on the fields of sexual and reproductive rights; racial violence, the policing of protest, and police accountability She has recently published the papers Constitutionalizing abortion in Brazil; Anti-racism legislation in Brazil: the role of the Courts in the reproduction of the myth of racial democracy (both on the Journal of Constitutional Research); and The battle over abortion rights in Brazil’s state arenas, 1995-2006 (Harvard Health and Human Rights Journal). Inside the legal field, her work focuses on legal theory and criminal law. The books Risk Society and Criminal Law, an evaluation of new legal-political trends (2005); Legal theory and conflict: a critical perspective of legal rationality (2012) and the edited volume Responsibility and Penalty in Democratic Rule of Law: theoretical challenges, public policies and the development of democracy (2016) reflects on how new phenomena are challenging and re-shaping the criminal law field.