Sílvia Lorenso

Sílvia Lorenso is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She first came to the United States as a Fulbright exchange graduate student hosted by Boston University and by the University of Texas, at Austin (2006-2007). Upon her return to Brazil, she completed her  M.A. in Linguistics and Semiotics at the University of São Paulo (2007). From 2008 to 2013, she worked on her Ph.D in Luso-Brazilian Literature at the University of Texas-Austin, where she taught intermediate and advanced Portuguese language and Brazilian culture. She was one of the key developers of the Service Learning component of the Portuguese Study Abroad Program in Bahia. In the next two years, she was a Carolina Postdoctoral Scholar at the  Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, where she developed her book manuscript on African Diaspora and Latin American literary connections.  Her research on African Diaspora literatures and cultures, and her projects on diversity and engaged methodologies in education have been supported by the Ford Foundation, Fulbright and CAPES - a foundation within the Ministry of Education in Brazil.