Lauri Miranda Silva

Lauri Miranda Silva (Porto Velho, July 22, 1986) is a Brazilian professor with a degree in History from the Federal University of Rondônia (UNIR) and a doctorate from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). She is the first trans woman in the country to earn a doctorate in History, a fact that occurred in 2023 through the defense of her thesis "Subversive Voices and Transgressive Bodies: Memory of the (Re) Existence of LGBTQIA+ Movement Militants and Intersectional Womanhoods Against Oppression in Rondônia (1980 to 2022)" , in which she addresses the LGBTQIA+ and women's movements in the state of Rondônia and their struggles against oppression, as well as her life trajectory as a trans woman.

Biography

Early Years and Adolescence Lauri moved in with her maternal grandparents at the age of three due to her mother's postpartum depression. Her father died when she was eight, in 1994. Lauri identifies her ancestry as a combination of Indigenous roots on her father's side and Black and Amazonian ancestry on her mother's side, and defines herself as belonging to a Ribeirinho identity. She grew up in an evangelical family and describes her childhood as happy, but faced racism and bullying at school due to her Afro hair and skin color. In the sixth grade, she experienced one of her first instances of homophobia and was blamed by a teacher for the discrimination she suffered. Upon entering university in 2007, Lauri faced challenges such as rejection by some classmates and difficulty being recognized by her social name. Despite this, she managed to establish herself in the academic environment and became a role model for other transgender people seeking higher education.

She's called herself "Lauri" since high school. However, while she was pursuing her master's degree, she was still using the name registered on her birth certificate, which didn't match her identity and assumed name (deadnaming). The process of changing her social name was gradual and faced a series of uncomfortable situations. In 2018, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) recognized the right of transgender and transgender people to change their name and gender on their civil registry without undergoing sex reassignment surgery.