Max Weber Fellow
Department of Law
Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
Contact info
rafael.lelis@eui.eu
Rafael Carrano Lelis is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. He conducted his doctoral studies at the Geneva Graduate Institute (defence scheduled for September 2025), where he also worked as a teaching assistant for three years. His thesis “(Re)imagining a queer human: subject-making in international human rights law” is based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork and examines the mobilisation of human rights by transnational LGBTI+ activists. Rafael holds a master’s degree in State Theory and Constitutional Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and a postgraduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Feminist Law Journal (AFLJ) and a contributor to the Queer Judgments Project. His latest book, published in 2023, analyses advocacy efforts by the Brazilian LGBTI+ movement in the 1980s. As a Max Weber Fellow, Rafael will work on the project ‘Contesting Gender in International Legal Discourse: Consequences of the Institutionalisation of Anti-Gender Groups at the United Nations,’ which investigates the transnational mobilization against ‘gender’ at global governance fora, and in particular the United Nations Human Rights Council. Rafael’s research interests broadly include international human rights law, queer and feminist approaches to international law, transnational activism, and anthropology of human rights.