Dr Jáfia Naftali Câmara
Dr Jáfia Naftali Câmara is from northern Brazil and is a British Academy Research Fellow at the Centre for Lebanese Studies and the University of Cambridge
She earned an AB from the University of California, Davis and an MA from New York University. Dr Câmara holds a PhD in Education from the University of Bristol with a thesis titled “Refugee Youth and Education: Aspirations and Obstacles in England.” She used antiracist and anti-colonial approaches to investigate how young refugees and their families encountered England’s education system.
Dr Câmara’s primary research interests are education, including education in emergencies, Indigenous, ribeirinhos and quilombolas’ education, educação do campo, educação popular, language education, migration, and mobilities. She is investigating young migrants’ access to education in northern Brazil and Latin America more broadly. Her work explores the intersections of racism(s), class, gender, border regimes, integration discourse and policy, and the coloniality of education at national and global levels. Other areas of interest include critical and anti-colonial perspectives, comparative research, knowledge production, education inequality, and research partnerships.
Select publications
- Câmara, J. N. (2023). Funds of knowledge: Towards an asset-based approach to refugee education and family engagement in England. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3946.
- J. N. Câmara (Ed.). (2023). Refugee stories: Education: Obstacles and aspirations. Illustrations by Arc Studio. www.reach.gse.harvard.edu/resources/refugee-stories-camara?rq=naftali
- Câmara, J. N. (2023). Anti-racism in education: promoting racial equity and building a global anti-
racist movement. ActionAid. https://actionaid.org/opinions/2023/anti-racism-education-promoting-racial-equity-and-building-global-anti-racist - Câmara, J. N. (2021). “Why is it speaking to me?”: Refugee background students’ experiences of education. https://resources.norrag.org/resource/659/states-of-emergency-education-in-the-time-of-covid-19
- Câmara, J. N. (2021). ‘Sanitary refugees’: Paraguayan migrants stranded at the border during COVID-
19. Department of Anthropology of Economic Experimentation, Max Planck Institute for Social
Anthropology, Halle (Saale). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48509/MoLab.6416 - Câmara, J. N. (2021). Overcrowded buses and clandestine transport in Brazil. Department of
Anthropology of Economic Experimentation, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
(Saale). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48509/molab.3922 - Câmara, J. N. (2021). Discriminatory approach to border closure and mobility restriction: Brazilian
government’s handling with Venezuelan migrants. Department of Anthropology of Economic
Experimentation, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany.
https://doi.org/10.48509/MOLAB.5949 - Câmara, J. N. (2020). “The government gives me £35 a week to buy food… During the lockdown, my
kids do not receive free school meals.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/the-
government-gives-me-35- a-week-to-buy-food-during-the-lockdown-my-kids-do-not-receive-free-
school-meals/ - Câmara, J. N. (2020). I’m a PhD student and I’m worried by my university’s coronavirus approach |
Jafia Naftali Camara. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/mar/18/im-a-phd-student-and-
im-worried-by-my-universitys-coronavirus-approach
