Luísa Reis-Castro Prof. Dr. Luísa Reis-Castro

Luísa Reis-Castro is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. She holds a PhD in history, anthropology, science, technology, and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research examines the social, cultural, political, and historical dimensions of scientific knowledge about multispecies relations, particularly in contexts involving harm to humans. Articles based on this research have appeared in Environmental Humanities; Engaging Science, Technology, and Society; and Isis, among others, and have received awards from the American Anthropological Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, and the History of Science Society.

Reis-Castro is currently completing her book manuscript, tentatively titled “How to Survive the Mosquito: Vectorial Politics in Brazil and Beyond,” which has been selected for the “Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century” series at the University of California Press. By examining the geopolitics of knowledge, racialized imaginaries of Brazilianness, and the mobilization of nature to address planetary challenges, “How to Survive the Mosquito” shows how novel mosquito projects are both technoscientific interventions and world-making endeavors.

RCC Project: How to Survive the Mosquito Epoch: Vectorial Politics in Brazil and Beyond (PDF, 66 KB)

Selected Publications:

• “Political Animals: To Live & Die in More-than-Human Worlds.” American Anthropologist (forthcoming).
• “Can the Mosquito Bite? The multispecies transmutation of Wolbachia mosquitoes as biotechnologies of epidemic control in Rio de Janeiro.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 11, no. 1 (2025): 75–100. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1555.
• with Jia Hui Lee. “Bites, Blood, Boundaries: Rats, Mosquitoes, & Domestication across Disciplines.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 54, no. 3 (2024): 351–70. doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02002.
• with Lisa Onaga. “Ambivalent Insects as Tools and Targets.” ISIS: A Journal of the History of Science Society 115, no. 1 (2024): 152–56. doi.org/10.1086/728886.
• “Becoming Without: Making Transgenic Mosquitoes and Disease Control in Brazil” Environmental Humanities 13, no. 2 (2021): 323–47. doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9320178.
• with Carolina Nogueira. “Uma Antropologia da Transmissão: Mosquitos, Mulheres e a Epidemia de Zika no Brasil.” ILHA Revista de Antropologia 22, no. 2 (2020): 21–63, doi.org/10.5007/2175-8034.2020v22n2p21.