Lívia is a Brazilian socio-legal scholar and researcher specializing in Law and Development, gender and sexuality rights, political institutions, and democratic backsliding. She holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Law and Development from the São Paulo Law School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV Direito SP), alongside a bachelor’s degree in Law from Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie and a bachelor’s degree in Social Communication from UNESP. She has further expanded her international research profile as a Global Fellow and guest researcher at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation (LawTransform) at the University of Bergen and the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway.
Her academic scholarship critically examines the intersections of human rights, constitutional politics, and judicial behavior during periods of state autocratization. Her empirical work features prominently in international journals such as Social Politics, where her research on LGBTQI+ rights under Brazil’s Bolsonaro administration analyzes how institutional resistance operates collectively across civil society and high courts. As an editor and coordinator, she leads initiatives such as the Gender, Sexuality and Law: South-South Perspectives research project, which foregrounds how marginalized groups contest and institutionalize rights outside traditional North Atlantic frameworks. She also contributes to academic governance and editing as a guest editor for Revista Direito GV.