Raquel Carvalheira

Raquel Carvalheira is an anthropologist with a PhD in Anthropology of Gender and Kinship (2015, University of Lisbon) and a Professor at the University of Algarve in Southern Portugal. Her main interests include gender and family dynamics in the MENA region, Muslim communities in Portugal, and, more recently, climate change, citizenship, and community-making among fishing populations. Her ethnographic fieldwork sites include Morocco (Essaouira), Portugal (Culatra and Lisbon), and Mauritania (National Park of Banc d’Arguin). She co-directed and co-produced the documentary film Um Ramadão em Lisboa (A Ramadan in Lisbon, 2019) and works for a new collective documentary currently in development for the Project Liminal Water. Among her publications, she authored “Modern Charity: Citizenship, Gender and Islam in Portugal" (in Facing Discrimination. Religion and Agency in Contemporary European Contexts, Berghahn, 2025), “Facets of Charity: Muslim Ethics, Postcolonial Dynamics, and Community-Making in Portugal" (HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2024) and "Communities of Care and Muslims in Portugal" (Journal of Muslims in Europe, 2024).