Isabella Pereira Nikel

Isabella Pereira Nikel is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Latin American and Iberian Cultures department at Columbia University. She holds a bachelor summa cum laude in International Relations from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). She also pursued an MA in Latin American and Latino Studies with a Concentration in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

Her research understands contemporary Brazilian art as a living archive capable of holding and resisting the individual and collective grief that coloniality has caused. Through an interdisciplinary examination of contemporary visual culture generated during and in the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic, she hopes to reveal the entanglements of race, memory, and coloniality in Brazil. Isabella hopes to expand her research to contemporary Latin American visual art that reveals the intersections of race, gender, and power dynamics and the enduring legacies of colonial violence.

Some of her other research interests include Feminist Knowledge Production, methodologies of the South, and queer and disability studies. Before Columbia, Isabella worked for 5 years in humanitarian work and international cooperation. She has also researched and taught about migrant and refugee rights in the Global South.

In her free time, you can find Isabella reading fiction, roller skating, or listening to her favorite musicals.