Born in Germany in 1961, I have done my university studies mostly in Brazil at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro where in 1987 I got a B.A. in Social Sciences and some years later my M.A. in Social Anthropology at the department of postgraduate studies at the National Museum. Since my PhD in Anthropology of Communication in 1995 at the University of Liege, Belgium, I worked at the University of Liege and from 1998 to 2007, I directed the Laboratory of Anthropology of Communication there. From 2008 to mid 2010 I have been an AHRC/ESRC Research Fellow at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool studying the impacts of cultural policy on local culture. My main research interests are the social construction of national identities, public space and its culturally differentiated re-appropriation, as well as the impact of tourism on cultural diversity and as a means of poverty alleviation.