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Luciana Martins

Positions held:
  • Professor of Latin American Visual Cultures, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
  • Programme Director, BA/Grad Cert Spanish and Latin American Studies; School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Originally trained in architecture and urban planning, Luciana Martins specialises in visual and material culture, historical geography, and environmental humanities. She joined Birkbeck in 2003. A founding Director of the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies - CILAVS (2007-16), and is currently CILAVS' Co-Director. Since 2017 she has been a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and was awarded the title of Honorary Research Associate (HRA) at Kew in 2026.

    Highlights

    • Just published: 'Reactivating Richard Spruce's Amazonian Biocultural Archive', in Imagining a New Natural History: Latin American Cultural Production in the Anthropocene, edited by N. Campisi and L. Mertehikian

    • In June, I co-presented the paper 'Crossing cultures, plants and methodologies: reworking Spruce collections in the Northwest Amazon (Brazil)' at Undisciplined Ethnobotany: Society for Ethnobotany Annual Congress 2026 in Montpellier, France

    • In February 2026 I was awarded the title of Honorary Research Associate (HRA) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 

    • New publication: 'Os Bororo em preto e branco: o arquivo visual do casal Lévi-Strauss e de Aloha Baker em Mato Grosso', in Precursoras da Antropologia Visual: Mulheres em Campo, edited by F. Gama,D. Woberto and L.G. Pitanga

    Office hours

    Please contact me by email to arrange an appointment.

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Director for BA/Grad Cert Spanish and Latin American Studies and Chair of the Sub-Board of Examiners
    • Co-Director, Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS)

    Professional memberships

    • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

    • Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

    • Member of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA)

    • Member of the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists

    • Member of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland

    • Member of the Society for Latin American Studies

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • The visual and material culture of travel and exploration
    • Biocultural collections
    • History of photography and film
    • Digital humanities
    • Decolonising research methodologies

    Research overview

    I am currently completing a book entitled Drawing together: the visual archive of expeditionary travel, supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. The book explores the practice and experience of image-making as deployed on European expeditions to South America from the 1850s to the 1950s.

    Since 2015, I have been working with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and other Brazilian institutions on a research programme on the biocultural collections of nineteenth-century botanist and explorer Richard Spruce. Drawing upon my previous AHRC-funded research project on Andean textiles, Weaving Communities of Practice, which developed a pioneering digital knowledge base, this collaborative project aims to reanimate the artefacts that Spruce sent to Kew Gardens and other British institutions. Details of a British Academy Knowledge Frontier project on this research programme can be found at Digital Repatriation of Biocultural Collections: Rio Negro, Amazonia. In 2025, we were awarded a NERC Amazonia + 10 Initiative research grant to develop the project Voices of Indigenous Amazonia: historical processes of sociobiodiversity in the face of the challenges of the Anthropocene.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research projects

    Voices of Indigenous Amazonia: historical processes of sociobiodiversity in the face of the challenges of the Anthropocene .

    Forging & Belonging: Researching Children's Social Relations & Imagined Futures through Crafting in Rural West Africa (FABRIC)

    Digital repatriation of biocultural collections: connecting scientific and indigenous communities of knowledge in Amazonia.

    Abstract

    Sustainable use of plant resources within the Amazon rainforest is a key priority both for human livelihoods and the maintenance of forest biodiversity. Indigenous peoples of Northwest Amazonia practice effective and sophisticated forms of land management, but these practices are under threat from migration, increasing mobility and loss of inter-generational knowledge transmission. Valuable information relevant to this challenge is contained in biocultural collections held both within and outside Brazil. Unlocking this potential requires an integrated, equitable approach to collections research and the capacity to share information with a wide range of end users. This project brings together an international and interdisciplinary team of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers to develop a digital portal of biocultural collections. Advancing methods of co-curatorship, including the making of new objects, the project will develop protocols for access of these biocultural heritage materials, which will be documented in a targeted policy report.

    Drawing together: the visual archive of expeditionary fieldwork

    Abstract

    This project investigates practices of visual observation by European travellers in South America, including the British botanist-explorer Richard Spruce (1817-1893), the Italian artist-ethnographer Guido Boggiani (1861–c. 1902), the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), and his wife Dina Dreyfus (1911-1999). Ranging widely across a variety of different media, including drawing, photography and film, the project explores the role of image-making in cross-cultural exchange and encounter.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions external to Birkbeck:
    2
    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    9

    I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest.

    In addition to the Birkbeck PhD students listed below, I'm also the second supervisor of Luisa Karman's PhD thesis on 'Harvesting sounds: African Brazilian musical instruments in UK museums' (working title) at SOAS and the advisor of Lindsay's Sekulowicz's PhD thesis on 'Drawing on stone and clay: practice-based approaches to Indigenous knowledge and materials in the Upper Rio Negro' at the University of Brighton & Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • ROSA DYER
      Nature of supervision:
      JOINT PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
    • MARIANA MILLECCO RIBEIRO
      Nature of supervision:
      PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR,
      Title of thesis:
      Costume Design and Women's Narrative in Adaptations of The Maias – A Journey from Nineteenth-Century Literature to the Twenty-First-Century Audiovisual

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • BEA CABALLERO
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      The spectacle of appropriation: 'the uses of Latin American cultural heritage in the construction of indigenous identities'
      Awarded:
      2018
    • PATRICIA BONCHRISTIANO
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2024
    • FREDERICO DUARTE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2021
    • CATARINA GANCHO FONTOURA
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2023
    • RAUL VALDIVIA MURGUEYTIO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2019
    • CHRISTINA BAUM
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Creative Component: The Lost Mother / Critical Component: On Writing 'The Lost Mother' and Researching the Life and Tales of Luzia Teresa dos Santos
      Description:

      Research Project Description
      Christina Baum

      My PhD is a practice-based research project in Creative Writing, consisting of two components: a full-length novel, The Lost Mother (approximately 65,000 words), and a critical study, On Writing The Lost Mother and Researching the Life and Tales of Luzia Teresa dos Santos (approximately 20,000 words).

      The project explores themes of personal and political memory, oral storytelling, translation, and cultural identity, with a particular focus on the Northeast of Brazil and its tradition of orally transmitted folk narratives. Central to the research is the figure of Luzia Teresa dos Santos (1909–1983), an illiterate rural storyteller from Paraíba, whose repertoire of 242 fairy tales was recorded and transcribed by local folklorists between 1977 and 1983.

      The creative component draws on both historical and fictional elements to trace the journey of a Brazilian-born, London-raised woman returning to post-dictatorship Brazil in search of her origins. Woven into the novel are newly translated selections of Luzia Teresa dos Santos’s fairy tales, adapted for an English-speaking readership.

      The critical component reflects on the process of writing the novel and translating Luzia’s stories. It examines the challenges of preserving oral narratives in written form, the translator’s responsibility in negotiating voice and authenticity, and the blurred boundaries between fiction and historical research. Methodologies include creative writing practice, archival research (conducted at the Federal University of Paraíba’s Centre for Popular Culture Research and Documentation), oral history interviews, and close reading of Luzia’s tales alongside other versions from the Portuguese and Brazilian folk traditions. The work also reflects on how storytelling shapes cultural identity and offers a means of reclaiming lost histories and homes.

      This research contributes to current discussions on memory, translation, and narrative ethics in creative writing, folklore studies, and cultural history, while also helping to disseminate the little-known legacy of Luzia Teresa dos Santos to a broader, international audience.

       

       

      Awarded:
      2026
    • AGATA LULKOWSKA
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Visual representations of Native Americans in film, photography and new media, in relation to their sense of identity.
      Awarded:
      2018

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Memory and History
    • Culture, Space and the Environment in Brazil (Level 5)
    • Culture and Image
    • Spanish 1
    • The Arts: Questioning the Contemporary World
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book section

    Conference item

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    I have media training.

    Outreach

    The Many Lives of a Shield, a video essay of a biography of a biocultural object from the Economic Botany Collection at Kew (8’57”), https://vimeo.com/200369869; with Portuguese subtitles, https://vimeo.com/200644645

    Digital repatriation of biocultural collections: connecting scientific and Indigenous communities of knowledge in Amazonia, video showing project workshops July 2019 (6'04"), https://vimeo.com/357556505

    Workshop in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, audio-visual report of the workshop activities (3’12”), https://vimeo.com/201827169

    Plantae Amazonicae, exhibition of artwork by Kew artist in residence Lindsay Sekulowicz, co-curator [with W. Milliken and M. Nesbitt], funded by Arts Council England, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, October 2017-March 2018.

    El Encanto, exhibition of artwork by Birkbeck artist in residence Freddy Dewe Mathews, funded by Arts Council England, Peltz Gallery, April-May 2017.

    ‘Seven Wonders of Brazil’, BBC2, interview with Faris Kermani on the cultural history of Brazil, broadcast June 2014.

    ‘The Invention of Brazil’, BBC-Radio 4, interview with Misha Glenny on the cultural history of Brazil, broadcast May 2014.

    ‘Unnatural Histories: Amazon’, BBC4, interview on documentary film and the exploration of the Amazon, broadcast April 2011.