Marta Machado

Marta Machado has been full-time professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School since 2007. Between 2023 and 2026, she served as Brazil’s National Secretary for Drug Policy and Asset Management at the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, while maintaining a part-time academic appointment at FGV. From 2019 to 2022, she held the position of Associate Dean for Academic Master’s and PhD Programs at FGV.

She earned her Master’s Degree from the University of São Paulo in 2004 and completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy and General Theory of Law at the same institution in 2007.

She has been visiting researcher at 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 and at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto and at Columbia Law School and a fellow at the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, University of Toronto School (2017). 

She’s currently senior researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP); global fellow at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation (University of Bergen); 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 fields of Legal Sociology and Law and Development. She has published extensively on the relation of law and social movements; anti-racism laws, sexual and reproductive rights; racial violence, police accountability, corruption and human rights.