Marta is a Brazilian legal scholar, socio-legal researcher, and public official. Since 2007, she has been a full-time professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Law School in São Paulo (FGV Direito SP). She also serves as Brazil’s National Secretary for Drug Policy and Asset Management (SENAD) within the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. She holds a Bachelor of Laws, an LL.M., and a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Theory of Law from the University of São Paulo (USP), alongside post-doctoral fellowships at Freie Universität Berlin and UC Berkeley.
Her interdisciplinary research operates at the intersection of legal sociology and political science, focusing on how social movements interact with criminal justice institutions. Machado has written extensively on gender violence, anti-racism litigation, protest policing, and the constitutionalization of abortion.
At FGV, she founded and coordinates the Center for Racial Justice and Law. She is also a senior researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and a global fellow at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation.