Yvonne Maggie: anthropologist was awarded National Order of Scientific Merit

Yvonne Maggie de Leers Costa Ribeiro was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro and she was the first woman in a family of male scientists to get a university degree. She graduated in social sciences from Rio de Janeiro Federal University in 1968. In 1974, she got a master’s in social anthropology, and in 1988 she received a doctorate, also in social anthropology, from Rio de Janeiro Federal University’s National Museum.

Her academic career has been strongly marked by Rio de Janeiro Federal University, where she was a student, professor, the coordinator of its Social Research Laboratory from 1988 to 1992 and the director of its Philosophy and Social Sciences Institute from 1994 to 1997. In 2008, she was awarded the National Order of Scientific Merit. In 2017 she received the title of Emeritus Professor at the Cultural Anthropology Department of the Philosophy and Social Sciences Institute in Rio de Janeiro. Since that year, she has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science.

The academic research done by Yvonne Maggie reflects her main interest in the religious traditions of Afro-Brazilian groups. She is the author of various books, including Guerra de orixá: um estudo de ritual e conflito (1975, 2001) and Medo do feitiço: relações entre magia e poder no Brasil (1992). For several years, she had a blog called “A vida como ela parece ser” (“Life as it seems to be”).

She has donated her extensive archives to CPDOC, based on her research and studies as an anthropologist between 1970 and 1980. Using this material, a film called Magia e Poder: fronteiras entre o sagrado e o profano (“Magic and Power: boundaries between the sacred and the profane”) was produced in 2019.

You can watch this film here.

This article is part of a special series called Women’s Archives, which was launched on International Women’s Day.