Vanicléia Silva Santos became the first tenured professor of African History at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 2010. She is a specialist in African material culture and the African diaspora. She has served as a curator of several exhibitions on art and material culture in Africa and the African Diaspora. She currently serves as a Curator of the Africa Galleries at the Penn Museum and teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Silva Santos is a member of UNESCO’s International Scientific Committee for the Ninth Volume of the General History of Africa Collection and edited the Volume on the African Diaspora (2023).
She teaches and researches African History, the African Diasporas, Material Culture, Atlantic History, and museum studies. Her publications explore African material culture in both Africa and the diaspora, focusing on the meanings, production contexts, circulation, and museum collections of African objects. Her work critically examines the colonial narratives surrounding African artifacts, including symbols of power and amulets, and their contemporary significance.
Forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024 is her catalog, From Makers for Museums (co-authored with Tukufu Zuberi), which offers a fresh perspective on curating museums and narratives. Her forthcoming books include Empowered Figures: The Congolese Saint Anthony in Early Modern Kongo, Angola, and Brazil, which presents new insights into 18th and 19th-century Black Atlantic sculptures; Bolsas de Mandinga in the Black Atlantic; and a biography of Crispina Peres, a prominent merchant from Upper Guinea.
Silva Santos has edited X number of volumes: African Ivory as Insignia of Power: Contexts of Production and Uses, Inside and Outside Africa (Fino Traço press, 2023); Ivory in the Modern World: Trade, Transit, Faith and Social Status (16th-19th centuries) (2018); Intellectual Heritage, History and Culture in West Africa, with Leopoldo Amado, Taciana Garrido, and Alexandre Marcussi (2019); Archeology and History of Material Culture in Africa and the African Diaspora, with Augustin Holl and Luis Symanski (2018); Ivory Trade in the Atlantic World: Transit and Production (15th to 19th centuries), with Eduardo Paiva and Rene Gomes (2017); and Africa and Brazil in the Modern World, with Eduardo Paiva (2012). She has also guest-edited for academic journals including Temporalidades, E-Hum, Revista de Ciências Humanas, and Varia Historia. Additionally, she has contributed chapters to some of these volumes.
Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from CAPES, CNPQ, Harvard University, UFMG, and the University of Pennsylvania.
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