Unicamp Approves First Posthumous Doctoral Defense for Dance Researcher

Overview

• Unicamp held a posthumous defense in late August 2026 to evaluate and approve the doctoral thesis of Carla Vendramin after her formal deposit two years earlier.
• Both Vendramin and her advisor Sílvia Geraldi died before the defense, with Vendramin passing in January 2024 and Geraldi in July 2025, which left the dossier without a clear institutional path.
• Program coordinators and professor Marisa Martins Lambert created and used a new internal procedure to complete the remaining academic steps and convene the unusual evaluation.
• The defense adopted a performative format that mixed dance, readings and symbolic elements tied to Vendramin’s research on composting, permaculture, bamboo and embodied ecological practices.
• With the thesis approved, Unicamp will place the work in its institutional repository and pursue publication, and the new procedure sets a precedent for handling similar cases in the future.