Dr. Thiago Lopes da Costa Oliveira

Thiago da Costa Oliveira is a Brazilian social anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, and curator specializing in Amazonian Indigenous knowledge systems, art and material culture. He studied Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he completed both his MA (2010) under the supervision of Prof. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and his PhD (2015) under the supervision of Prof. Carlos Fausto. His doctoral dissertation examined the Baniwa people of the Upper Rio Negro and their ontological concepts of people and artefacts.

Following his doctorate, he held postdoctoral fellowships at several leading institutions: a CAPES-PNPD fellowship at the National Museum/UFRJ (2015–2019), a Fulbright-Smithsonian fellowship at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. (2019), and an Alexander von Humboldt-CAPES fellowship, subsequently extended through a Gerda Henkel Stiftung fellowship and an Amazonia Future Lab fellowship, at the Ethnological Museum Berlin and the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin (2020–2024). 

In parallel to his studies, and continuing throughout his career, he collaborated with the Programa de Documentação de Línguas e Culturas Indígenas (PROGDOC) of the Museu do Índio/FUNAI, a large-scale initiative developed in partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and UNESCO. He contributed to the program in successive roles — first as a photographer and researcher (2012–2014), then as project manager for the Research on the Cultural Heritage of Border and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples from the Amazonia (2016–2019), and finally as manager of research digital archives and collections (2022–2023).

Since 2025, he is based at the Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar as a wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, where he coordinates the research project "Resocialization of Sound: Collaboration in Research, Archiving and Dissemination with Amazonian Collectives" (2025–2028) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Matthias Lewy, in partnership with the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève and the Wayana and Aparai Indigenous peoples.

His research interests centre on Amazonian Ethnology, Anthropology of Art and Sound, Material Culture Studies, Media Anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies, with a particular focus on decolonial approaches to museum practice, and the ethics and politics of archiving and digital curation in collaboration with Indigenous communities. He has conducted extensive fieldwork among several Amazonian peoples, including the Baniwa, Kayapó, Kuikuro (Upper Xingu), Arara, Asuriní, Tuyuka, and Kotiria.

He has authored and co-authored books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles published by leading academic presses and journals, including Böhlau Verlag (Germany), Ludion (Belgium), Routledge (New York/London), and Transcript Verlag (Berlin), as well as in journals such as Cultural Anthropology and MANA – Estudos de Antropologia Social.

His curatorial practice spans major institutions in Brazil, Europe, and the United States. Following his inaugural work in the field as assistant curator for Índios no Brasil (2011, Europalia Belgium/Brazilian Ministry of Culture), he co-curated many shows, including Patrimônios do Norte (2018) for IPHAN (the Brazilian Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage), and the long-term project No One Ever Asked Me to Tell the Story of the White People (2020–2025) for the Ethnological Museum Berlin and the Humboldt Forum. His documentary films have been recognised with awards at international film festivals, such as the Curta Rio film festival (2014).