Claudia Favarato   |   The Digipolitical

Claudia Favarato is a postdoctoral researcher in political theory. She currently works as a fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and she is based at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Claudia’s academic career took shape in a journey that involved several countries. Her master at the University of Padua (Italy) sparked many scientific curiosities, along with the willingness to research on Portuguese-speaking African countries. She the embarked on a second master at the University of Lisbon, which took her repeatedly to Guinea-Bissau to study the local phenomenon of spirit-children (criança-irân). A combination of academic and personal reasons, ranging from the intriguing research topic and mentoring team to Lisbon’s charm, led her to start her Ph.D. (political science) in the Portuguese capital. During the almost-eight years there, she worked as visiting scholar in Guinea-Bissau, and at SOAS (University of London).

In the doctoral studies, she started working on political humanness: considering the challenges that the phenomenon of non-human or spirit-children represents, her analysis focused on the political dimension of humanness. The research showed that both local and national, state politics rest on conflicting readings of the human, which mixes indigenous understandings with liberal models. While inspired in African philosophy, she worked extensively with comparative political theory. 

In Germany, besides spending her days thinking about the political, she enjoys practising yoga, baking goodies, and (trying to) juggle academic and family life (married, mother of one).