PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, Mariana Cavalcanti Rocha dos Santos is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Programme in Sociology at the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ). She was a Tinker Visiting Professor at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University (ILAS) and a Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Centre for Latin American Studies at Harvard University (DRCLAS). She was also a professor at the Centre for Research and Documentation of Contemporary Brazilian History at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (CPDOC-FGV), where she served as coordinator of the Oral History Programme (PHO).

CNPq Productivity Fellow (level 2), Scientist of Our State (Faperj) and Procientista (UERJ), she coordinates, along with Prof. Eugênia Motta, the Casa Group: social studies on housing and the city, and, along with Maria Raquel Passos Lima (ICS-UERJ), ResiduaLab: a laboratory for social studies of waste, based at the Maracanã campus of UERJ. Co-founder of Casa Fluminense, of which she was also an advisor. She was a member of the Catalytic Communities (CatComm) Council. Her research is dedicated to the conceptual and ethnographic construction of an anthropology of urbanism, or urbanisms of the global south, focusing on the themes of housing, infrastructure and urban water in the production of cities. She co-directed, with Paulo Fontes (PPGHis/ICHF-UFF) and Thais Blank (CPDOC-FGV), the documentary Favela Fabril (2012, 50′) and co-wrote, with Julia O’Donnell, the script for the documentary A Conquista do Oeste, directed by Isabel Joffily. She coordinated the co-production of the interactive multimedia documentary Águas do Caju, which brings together short films, archival material, images, sounds, and other contemporary narratives about the history of Caju. She also coordinates the thematic project ‘Water infrastructures: urban waters and the production of the city in Rio de Janeiro’ (FAPERJ, 2023-27), which institutionalises the study group on urban infrastructure founded in 2019 and co-coordinated by Camila Pierobon (PPGAS/MN-UFRJ), Julia O’Donnell (PPGSA/IFCS-UFRJ), Marcella Araújo and Maria Raquel Passos Lima. Participates in the international research networks Massive Urbanization collective, Urban Repair and Mosquito net.