Robin E. Sheriff

Robin E. Sheriff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, specializing in sociocultural anthropology with dual expertise in Brazilian race relations and the anthropology of dreaming in contemporary America. Her career bridges ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro's favelas with innovative studies of media-influenced dreamscapes among U.S. college students.

Her educational foundation includes:

• B.A. in Anthropology, Bard College
• Ph.D. in Anthropology, City University of New York (1997)

Sheriff's research trajectory reveals a profound evolution from documenting racial dynamics in Brazil—where her 20-month favela fieldwork catalyzed national policy debates—to pioneering analyses of how smartphones, social media, and reality television reshape dream consciousness. Her seminal book Dreaming Equality: Color, Race and Racism in Urban Brazil (2001) established her as a key voice in critical race studies, while recent works like Mobile Dreaming (2019) dissect the interpenetration of digital technology and oneiric subjectivity. She co-edited New Directions in the Anthropology of Dreaming (2021), positioning her at the forefront of interdisciplinary dream scholarship.

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications (2000-2022) reveals a decisive methodological pivot: early works employed traditional ethnography to expose racial silences in Brazil, while post-2015 research innovates with dream-content analysis to explore media saturation in U.S. youth culture. Recurring thematic threads include the gendered dimensions of vulnerability (e.g., true crime dreams), multispecies sociality (e.g., human-animal dream interactions), and the political economy of race across Latin America. Her scholarship consistently links micro-level dream narratives to macro-level structures of power, demonstrating anthropology's capacity to illuminate both historical oppression and emergent cultural forms.