V (Vitor) Renck Maciel MSc

I have just finished my PhD in Ecology in the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. I am currently a post doctoral researcher from the GEOS project. I did my PhD research in ethnobiology and ethnotaxonomy of an artisanal fishing community in the Itapicuru estuary, Northeast coast of Brazil. I used a transdisciplinary research approach in order to comprehend the prospects and limits of integration between the traditional and academic ecological knowledge.

In my post doctoral research, I’ll be documenting types of fishing expertise in two artisanal fishing villages in the Itapicuru estuary. Through semi-structured interviews with traditional experts from Siribinha and Poças, I aimed to answer questions such as: How is fishing expertise distributed in the Itapicuru estuary? How is this expertise related to fishing territories (estuary/river, mangrove, low sea, high sea)? Does gender play a role in fishing expertise? How do they identify an expert (is age and fishing frequency important?)? How does that differ from the scientific definition of expertise?

Apart from this empirical and ethnobiological research, I’ll be also reflecting upon the conceptualization of expertise itself, bringing critical and theoretical advancements to the field.