My scientific and teaching career

Hello, I’m Professor Bárbara Carine Soares Pinheiro, known on social media as “The Different Intellectual” (Instagram: @uma_intelectual_diferentona). I’m a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Chemistry at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), where I’ve worked for 13 years. I’m also a lecturer, writer—with 13 published books, one of which won the Jabuti Prize—and co-founder of the country’s first Afro-Brazilian school, the Maria Felipa School. My career as a teacher and researcher has been built over the course of my life. Born in the suburbs of Salvador, the daughter of a domestic worker, my only hope of upward social mobility was through education. Although my mother didn’t finish elementary school, she always encouraged me to study. It was all I had—and it was enough to transform my reality. Growing up, I was just like any other girl: I loved to play, party, and live life to the fullest. But very early on, I realized that education would be the key to changing my life, my family’s life, and, most importantly, my mother’s life.

I have always studied with commitment and discipline. While preparing for my university entrance exams, I gave free private lessons to put my knowledge into practice. It was then that I discovered my vocation: I was often told that I had a clear and pleasant way of explaining things. So I decided to become a teacher. I chose chemistry because I loved the exact sciences—especially chemistry and mathematics. Chemistry attracted me because of its concrete and experimental dimension, which mathematics lacked. I continued my studies with a master’s and doctorate in chemistry education, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and then a postdoctoral fellowship in education. For nearly 15 years, I have dedicated my life to higher education, research, dissertation supervision, and academic and social activities. This is a glimpse of my journey, marked by courage, love, science, and the desire to transform the world.

The founding of the Maria Felipa Afro-Brazilian School and its impact on decolonial education

I founded the Maria Felipa Afro-Brazilian School in 2017, when my daughter, who is Black, was born. Originally from Salvador, I was already deeply disturbed by the education provided in mainstream schools. The Eurocentric and colonial curriculum placed exclusively white people at the center of narratives, in all fields—history, mathematics, literature, science, philosophy. They were the only legitimate producers of knowledge. Indigenous and Black peoples, on the other hand, were systematically erased as knowledge-makers, thinkers, and creators of culture. Yet I knew that Africa is the cradle of humanity: the first civilizations, the first knowledge—including in chemistry and philosophy—were born on this continent. It therefore seemed unbearable to me that a Black child should spend 16 years in school without ever seeing themselves represented positively. This is why I founded the Maria Felipa School. A school for all children—Black, white, Indigenous—where each can recognize themselves in their ancestors, their history, their memories. A school where they can see themselves as powerful, as builders of knowledge. It is deeply painful that Indigenous children, by studying Brazilian history, are led to see themselves as “savages” whom whiteness has civilized. It is equally cruel that Black children find only chains, beatings, and slavery in their memories. I did not want that for my daughter. At Maria Felipa School, we do not reject European knowledge—we value it—but we place it on an equal footing with African, Indigenous, and other marginalized forms of knowledge. We are a decolonial school: we value all stages of civilization, without hierarchizing cultures.

How my journey can inspire girls to pursue science

I believe my story can indeed inspire other girls to pursue science. I always say I was an ordinary girl—I wasn’t an exception, nor a genius. I was, and still am, a girl with dreams, who found in science both a love and a path to social transformation. Science appeared to me as a tool for emancipation, not only individual, but also collective, for my people. Through my research on African science communication, I understood the transformative power of science: it liberates, it opens paths, it changes trajectories. It is therefore essential that girls understand that science is also for them. Although historically marked by an exclusionary androcentrism, women have always been present in it, creating, innovating, and leaving their mark. I am the author of the book Decolonizing Knowledge: Black Women in Science , in which I show that, despite their historical erasure, Black women have always produced knowledge and contributed to science. Representation is essential. As I also write in How to Become an Anti-Racist Teacher  : “Where we don’t see ourselves, we can’t think ourselves.”  So it’s crucial that girls discover journeys like mine. So they can be inspired, identify with them, and say to themselves, “Yes, it’s possible.”

To learn more about Professor Barbara Carine Soares Pinheiro: https://abpnrevista.org.br/site/article/view/1050 

Written by Daniel Manzoni de Almeida and edited by Intan