Dr Marcus De Matos
Lecturer in Law

Research area(s)

• Brazilian & Latin American law, history and politics
• Critical legal studies and methods 
• Feminist Approaches to Law
• History of Law, Racism and Colonialism
• Human Rights history, methods and philosophy
• Jurisprudence (Legal Theory)
• Legal history of Fascism, Populism and Authoritarianism
• Law and Film
• Law and Literature
• Law and Religion
• Legal methods & legal systems
• Natural Law and its critics
• Public Law & Political Theology
• Transitional justice and The Right to Memory

Research Interests

My research is focused on the notion of state sovereignty as a founding paradox in legal and constitutional theory. I have developed a visual investigation on the notion of sovereignty by taking it not only as a founding concept of modern legal theory, but also as a trope: a special kind of narrative, illustrated, capable of being modernized, and yet maintaining its initial trends; one that is foundational and colonial, and capable of institutionalizing sovereigns and subjecting subjects. My research discusses the problematic relation between law and image from the analysis of digital pictures of torture and surveillance produced by contemporary films, social media and government agencies. It is based on methodological approaches developed in the fields of critical legal studies and visual culture studies and proposes a new iconocritical method to analyse the entanglement of aesthetics and authority in the functions of the role of images and the rule of law. This has led me to investigate different ways in which legal subjectivity can be designed to accommodate notions of state sovereignty that are supposed to be incompatible with democracy and the rule of law - such as in transitional, post-colonial or authoritarian political contexts. I am particularly interested in the collusion of legal, political, native and theological conceptions of sovereignty in Latin American, African and Iberian countries. 

A second strand of my research incorporates my government-based work experience in human rights and public policies. I am interested in issues such as constitutional & political freedom, memory & truth, separation of powers, freedom of speech and religion; protection of witnesses, journalists and human rights activist; equality, native rights and racism; slavery, human trafficking, torture and surveillance. I am also interested in understanding how technique and technology currently affect these issues and their legal and political contexts.

I currently co-lead two Research Groups: 

• Human Rights, Society and Arts
• Living Avatars

I have received the BRIEF Award 2023/2024 to develop my project "Human Rights, Religion and the Cold War: building an archive about the Persecution of Brazilian Religious Leaders."

I have recently worked on two funded projects: 

• "Human Rights & Religion: the legacy of the Brazilian 1962 North-Eastern Conference for public theology and democracy", funded by Brunel Institute of Communities and Societies (2021-2022).
• "Living avatars: projections of self, others and power," funded by BRIL, the Brunel Research Interdisciplinary Lab (2021-2022).

I am currently an international collaborator to the Fazenda da Posse Project - The History of Brazilian Justice: delivering judgment and evidence in Barra Mansa City trials (1920-1988). This is a project lead by State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and funded by FAPERJ, CAPES and Barra Mansa City Council Culture Foundation.