Tinker Visiting Professors

Suely Rolnik is a Brazilian psychoanalyst, writer, and occasional curator. She is a Full Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP, since 1979), where she founded the Subjectivity Studies Centre in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program. She was a visiting professor at the National University of Colombia (2013–2019) and at MACBA, Barcelona (2008–2014). Exiled in Paris from 1970 to 1979, she trained in Psychoanalysis and Institutional Psychotherapy, and she graduated and earned a Master’s degree in Sociology and Philosophy (Paris VIII) and in Clinical Human Sciences (Paris VII), where she also completed her clinical Ph.D. She has later obtained a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at PUC-SP (1987). 

Rolnik has published numerous essays and books, including Spheres of Insurrection: Notes to Decolonize the Unconscious (Polity Press, 2023), Zombie Anthropophagie (Turia + Kant, 2018), and Archive Mania (Hatje Cantz / Documenta 13, 2011). She co-authored with Félix Guattari (Vozes, 1986; Molecular Revolution in Brazil, Semiotext, 2006). She has guest-edited special issues for Zehar (Spain), Parachute: Art Contemporain–Contemporary Art (Canada), Errata (Colombia), and Cadernos de Subjetividade (Brazil), and created the Archive for a Work-Event on Lygia Clark, co-curating the exhibition Nous sommes le moule (Nantes, 2005; São Paulo, 2006). 

Her research focuses on micropolitics and devices of resistance within the “colonial-racializing-hetero-cis-patriarchal-capitalist regime of the unconscious,” adopting a transdisciplinary, clinical-cultural-political perspective. 

Professor Rolnik will be teaching Decolonizing the Unconscious. What Does That Mean? And Why Does It Matter?

Bárbara Arroyo is a Research Associate at the Museo Popol Vuh of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín and an archaeologist specializing in early sedentary communities and social complexity in Mesoamerica. For the last fifteen years, she has led the Kaminaljuyu Archaeological Project, overseeing fieldwork, training programs, and initiatives to conserve earthen monuments. She obtained her B.A. in Archaeology from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University. 

Arroyo’s research covers the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador, with additional archaeological work in Dos Pilas and northern Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Her scholarship focuses on the origins of sedentary villages, ceramic production, monumentality, and the development of social complexity in ancient Mayan societies. She has been a Senior Fellow and Research Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Her contributions to archaeology have been recognized with honors, including the Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the French government and a Presidential Recognition from the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, she was elected as an international honorary member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent recognition was at the Shanghai Archaeology Forum in December 2025, when her Kaminaljuyu project was awarded a Field Discovery Award. 

Professor Arroyo will be teaching the workshop Shared Pasts: Collaborative Archaeology in Mesoamerica and the Andes.

José Augusto Pádua is a professor of Brazilian environmental history at the Institute of History / Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he coordinates the History and Nature Laboratory. He is president of the Latin American and Caribbean Society for Environmental History (SOLCHA) and was president of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Environment and Society (ANPPAS) between 2010 and 2015. He was part of the creation team and is a member of the scientific board of the Museum of Tomorrow (Rio de Janeiro). He was a senior visiting fellow at St Antony's College, University of Oxford (2004 and 2007/2008) and is a fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich (since 2014). As a specialist in environmental history and politics, he has given lectures and courses, as well as participated in fieldworks, in more than forty-five countries. His current research topics include the historical analysis of the Anthropocene and the comparative history of the Amazon and Atlantic forests in Brazil. He has published several books and articles, including Land Use: Handbook of the Anthropocene in Latin America I (2024).

He will be teaching Locating the History of the Anthropocene: The Case of Brazil.

Julio Saguir is a political scientist whose work focuses on constitutional formation, state-building, and institutional design in Latin America from a comparative perspective. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and has held academic positions at institutions including Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. His research examines the first constitutional conventions and union pacts of the Americas, exploring how founders understood political conflict, territorial integration, and representation in post-colonial contexts.

Alongside his academic career, Saguir has served in public administration, including as Secretary of Public Management in the Government of Tucumán, Argentina, where he led initiatives on strategic planning, data governance, and inter-agency coordination. His current project, Founders & Foundings, analyzes constitutional alternatives and institutional choices across the United States and Latin America, with particular attention to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

He will be teaching Organizational Solutions.