Fall 2016

Ruben Oliven is Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D from the University of London (London School of Economics and Political Science) and was a visiting professor at several universities, among them the University of California at Berkeley, Dartmouth College, Brown University and the University of Paris. He was the President of the Brazilian Anthropological Association and the President of the Brazilian Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences. He won the Erico Vannucci Mendes Prize for Distinguished Contribution to the Study of Brazilian Culture. In 2014 he was awarded the Prize for Academic Excellence in Anthropology by the National Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences. His research interests include urbanization, national and regional identities, popular culture and popular music, and symbolic meanings of money.