Clarisse Figueiredo de Queiroz is a Ph.D. student and Presidential Fellow in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
Her research investigates how the built environment mediates the entanglements of extraction, cosmology, and state formation in modern and contemporary Brazil. Working at the intersection of architectural history, anthropology, media theory, decolonial studies and environmental humanities, she examines how colonial and Cold War infrastructures shaped territorial imaginaries in Brazil’s Northeast and North regions—and how Indigenous and local communities mobilize ritual, memory, and dreams to reframe those imaginaries and unsettle dominant regimes of knowledge and design. Situating these dynamics within transnational circuits of capital, her work connects Brazil’s internal “frontiers” to broader planetary histories of modernization, displacement, and ecological crisis across the Global South.
Before joining Penn, Clarisse completed her M.S. at Columbia University, where her thesis Unearthed: Gold, Curses, and Architecture examined the “Monument to the Garimpeiro”(1969) in the Brazilian Amazon as a spatial device sustaining the advancing of illegal gold mining activities in Indigenous land alongside questions pertaining to environmental toxicity, labor, and non-Western cosmovisions. She has previously worked in land rights, rural archives, and community advocacy, and contributed to Architecture and Land in and out of the Americas (Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2023).
Education
M.S. in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP), Columbia University, USA, 2024
Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Brazil, 2018
Exchange Program in the International Master of Architecture entitled “Architecture: Resilient and Sustainable Strategies,” KU Leuven University, Belgium, 2014
Select Talks
Queiroz, Clarisse Figueiredo de. “Shifting Sands: Architecture, Ritual, and Resistance in Almofala.” Learning from the South: Cultural Landscapes and Transnational Dialogues on Urbanization in Transition, International PhD Seminar, Habitat Research Center (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland), June 2025.
Moderator, “Forest Experiences” panel, Architectures and Ecologies of Amazonia Symposium, University of Pennsylvania, Kleinman Energy Forum, Philadelphia, February 2025.
Awards
Student Research Award Recipient, Humanities + Urbanism + Design Initiative (H+U+D), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, University of Pennsylvania, 2025-2026
Will M. Mehlhorn Scholarship, Department of Architecture, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, 2025