top of page

Bio

Perfil Pessoal

fabio_zuker.jpeg

Fábio Zuker is an anthropologist and a researcher at Pensi Institute (at the José Luiz Setúbal Foundation) and the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo. He is also an affiliated researcher with the Fluid Futures initiative (Princeton University) and the project "Transitions environnementales à lère de lAnthropocène" (Maison du CNRSUSP).

He holds a PhD from the University of São Paulo (with a research period at Cornell University). He has completed postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the Collège de France (Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale). He has taught courses on environmental issues, public health, and the Anthropocene at both the University of São Paulo and Princeton University.

As an environmental researcher, he has over a decade of experience investigating the complex dynamics of deforestation, political ecology, and Indigenous resistance in the Brazilian Amazon. Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork and informed by anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and public health, his work is anchored in interdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement.

His research unfolds along three interconnected lines:
(1) the incentives behind deforestation, analyzing the financial, political, and ideological drivers of environmental destruction;
(2) the intersections of environment and health, investigating how deforestation and industrial agriculture affect Amazonian communities from toxic contamination to the emergence of diseases and interactions with climate change; and
(3) Indigenous ecologies, focusing on knowledge systems and political strategies of environmental preservation and resistance.

His work has been recognized with the USP Dissertation Award (Prêmio Tese Destaque USP, 2023). He has published several academic articles, including in Mana and Science, and has two book chapters currently in press in academic collections.

He is the author of The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon (Milkweed Editions, 2022). As a journalist, Zuker has been a four-time Pulitzer Center grantee and has published in a wide range of outlets, including Folha de São Paulo, Revista Piauí, Nexo Jornal, Agência Pública, O Joio e o Trigo, InfoAmazônia, National Geographic, Wired, The Guardian, and Thomson Reuters Foundation, as well as in Brazil's leading media outlets. He is also the author of Em Rota de Fuga: ensaios sobre escrita, medo e violência (Hedra, 2020), and has produced essays, podcasts, and documentaries.

bottom of page