Rita Laura Segato holds a PhD and a master’s degree in social Anthropology from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is a Professor of Anthropology and Bioethics at the UNESCO Chair at the University of Brasilia and a maximum-level researcher at the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the director of the Anthropology and Human Rights research group. Furthermore, she is the director of the subproject ‘Inclusion policies and the legal discussion’ of the National Science and Technology Institute of Inclusion in Education and Research (INCTI). Rita Segato has been a visiting researcher at different universities in Latin America, Europe and the United States. She is the co-author along with José Jorge de Carvalho of the first proposal about introducing quotas for Black and Indigenous students at public universities in Brazil. She is a consultant for UNICEF Brazil about the topic of Indigenous Infanticide and a directorate member of the Brazilian NGO AGENDE – actions on gender.

Among her most famous publications are: Las Estructuras Elementales de la Violencia. Ensayos sobre género entre la antropología, el psicoanálisis y los Derechos Humanos, La Escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez, Mulher negra = Sujeito de direitos e as Convenções para a Eliminação da Discriminação (Em colaboração com Laura Ordóñez), La Nación y sus Otros. Raza, Etnicidad y Diversidad Religiosa en tiempos de política de la identidad, Religions in Transition. Mobility, Merging and Globalization in the Emergence of Contemporary Religious Adhesions (organizado en colaboración con Jan-Ake Alvarsson), Santos e Daimones: O Politeísmo Afro-Brasileiro e a Tradição Arquetipal, Shango Cult In Recife, Brazil (en colaboración con José Jorge de Carvalho), El Culto Xangô de Recife (en colaboración con José Jorge de Carvalho).