Vera da Silva Sinha

My guest this week is Vera da Silva Sinha who works as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of York, looking at time, number and space in indigenous minority language communities of Brazil. We begin by talking about Vera’s experience of lockdown and of Christmases spent growing up in Brazil. Vera is from a small village in the south of Brazil where her father was a lorry driver.

Vera was 29 when she left Brazil, where she was a police officer, and was doing a PhD at the time that she met her husband. She ended up moving to Europe and Vera talks about the stereotypes involved when comparing different countries.

Vera talks about how she didn’t have much money when growing up but that this was offset by the chance to meet many people in different places. She talks about how she became an anthropologist and how she came across two Bibles in different languages which had a big effect on her. She isn’t someone who tends to remember dates but she does remember the images of those moments from her past.

Vera talks about classical music and how she used to listen to the BBC World Service on Short Wave, and she reveals why she needs to have music on in the background when trying to sleep.

She talks about working with vulnerable and abused people both as a policewoman in Brazil and, today, as an academic where she does work with different communities and deals with exactly the same areas.

Vera discusses something very tragic that happened in her family for which the pain never goes away and how she kept her family together and tried to be the best researcher as a result.

She is so proud of her parents for what they taught her, and Vera reflects on how the chances of her going to university from her background was very small.

We talk about the things that motivate us and about social class and how Vera was the object of prejudice because of her accent while she was at school. She talks about an episode which turned her into a writer and about the responsibility of a teacher to empower, rather than crush, people.

Then, towards the end of the interview, Vera discloses what her younger self imagined she would end up doing with her life and about how if you do something you like to do then the outcome will be fine. She has a life story which can resonate with many people and Vera talks about how lucky she feels to have had the life she has led.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Vera da Silva Sinha and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.