Ana Teresa Acatauassú Venâncio

Biography

Ana Teresa Acatauassú Venancio has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Political Science from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro, earned in 1985. She received her master’s (1990) and PhD (1998) in Social Anthropology from the Museu Nacional, which is part of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She has been a member of the Iberoamerican Network in the History of Psychology (RIHP) since 2008 and served as co-coordinator for 2012-2016. She currently sits on the scientific editorial board of the journal História, Ciências, Saúde—Manguinhos. She is a researcher with the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz Research Department and professor with the professional master’s degree program in Preservation and Management of Cultural Heritage in the Sciences and Health at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz. Her research and teaching interests include the history of science and psychiatric care; the anthropology of health; history and social theory; collective representations of madness and mental illness; and the social construction of the modern person. She is currently investigating the role of twentieth-century Brazilian psychiatry in the construction of scientific ideas about physical and moral disturbances, which were contemporaneous and engaged in dialogue with other forms of knowledge about these disturbances.

Research Interest

history of psychiatry, mental hygiene, and mental illness; anthropology of health and disease