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Rodrigo Nogueira Machado is a Brazilian Deaf linguist, sign language researcher, and educator who serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Libras and Deaf Studies at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) in Fortaleza, Brazil. He is also a research collaborator at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), where he contributes to the construction of a national Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) corpus

Quick Facts

Early life and Deaf community leadership

Before pursuing an academic career, Machado was active for many years in Deaf community organizing in Brazil. Between the early 2000s and the 2010s, he held volunteer leadership roles with the National Federation for the Education and Integration of the Deaf (FENEIS), serving as Coordinator of Deaf Youth for FENEIS and later as the organization's First Vice-President. During this period he also served as a councilor on the Ceará State Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and held leadership positions in regional Deaf sports federations[2].

His early activism included extensive participation in national and international Deaf youth gatherings, including encounters organized under the Frontrunners model of Deaf youth leadership training, and a 532-hour World Deaf Youth Leadership training program completed in Denmark in 2007. He also worked as an international sign language interpreter for the United Nations, notably providing International Sign interpreting services at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012[2].

Education

Machado's academic formation reflects an unusually interdisciplinary path. He completed an undergraduate degree in Geography (Bacharelado) at the Universidade Luterana do Brasil (ULBRA) in 2007, followed by a degree in Letras-Libras (Licenciatura) from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in 2010[2]. He went on to complete a Master's degree in Linguistics at UFSC in 2016, with a dissertation investigating linguistic borrowing from foreign sign languages into Libras among the first cohort of UFSC's Letras-Libras program[2][5].

He subsequently pursued doctoral studies in Linguistics and Literature at the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), completing his PhD in 2022 under the supervision of Jair Barbosa da Silva, with Christian Rathmann as co-advisor [2][4]. As part of his doctoral training, Machado undertook a DAAD-funded (German Academic Exchange Service) sandwich doctorate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, between 2021 and 2022[1][2][3].

Doctoral Research

Machado's doctoral thesis, titled O processo de empréstimos lingüísticos na Libras: modalidades e categorização ("The linguistic loan process in Libras: modalities and categorization"), was defended at UFAL's Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras e Linguística in December 2022[3][4]. The 188-page dissertation describes the different modalities through which linguistic borrowing occurs in Libras, with particular emphasis on lexical borrowings arising from contact among spoken Portuguese, written language, other sign languages, and culturally embedded gestures[3]. Building on his earlier master's research, the thesis develops a categorization of borrowing modalities grounded in corpus analysis, drawing on data from the Corpus de Libras dos Surdos de Referência and using the ELAN annotation software to identify structural and functional patterns in the formation of lexical items[1][3].

The study's examining committee included Ronice Müller de Quadros, Tarcísio de Arantes Leite, Paulo Rogério Stella, and Adeilson Pinheiro Sedrins, in addition to his advisors[4]. The thesis concludes that linguistic borrowing in Libras is a plural and inherently multimodal phenomenon shaped by diverse linguistic and cultural contacts, and that the field remains comparatively underexplored within Brazilian sign language scholarship[1][3].

Academic Career

Machado has been affiliated with UFC since 2011, where he holds the position of Professor Adjunto (adjunct professor) under an exclusive-dedication regime within the Centro de Humanidades[2]. From March 2016 to March 2020 he served as head (Chefe) of the Department of Letras-Libras and Deaf Studies (DELLES) at UFC[1][2]. He has taught a range of undergraduate courses in the Letras-Libras program, including Libras as a first language, Libras sociolinguistics, Libras phonetics and phonology, semantics and pragmatics, discourse analysis, and notions of International Sign[2].

He currently coordinates the Fortaleza-region component of the National Libras Inventory project (Inventário Nacional de Libras), an initiative that documents regional variation in Libras as part of Brazil's broader National Linguistic Diversity Inventory, under the general coordination of linguist Ronice Müller de Quadros of UFSC[1][2][6]. He also participates in the long-running project on Documentação da Libras (Documentation of Libras), which encompasses linguistic description, Libras literature, specialized glossaries, and teaching materials, and in research on subtitling and audiovisual accessibility (the EXLEG project) through the LATAV laboratory at the Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE), where he also serves as a consultant on closed captioning for Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers[2]. He is additionally a member of Brazil's Technical-Pedagogical Advisory Commission on Libras for INEP/MEC, the national body responsible for educational assessments, including translation work for the ENEM national secondary-education exam[1][2].

Affiliations and professional recognition

Machado's institutional profile lists experience across multiple Brazilian universities, including visiting or collaborative roles at the Federal University of Alagoas, the Universidade Estadual do Ceará, and earlier visiting teaching positions at institutions such as the Universidade de Caxias do Sul and, internationally, the Universidad Especializada de las Américas in Panama, where he taught a course on International Sign for the Panamanian sign language interpreting degree program[2]. He is listed as faculty on the homepage of UFC's Libras program (libras.ufc.br)[5].

  1. SLS 26 Summer School in Sign Linguistics. (n.d.). Rodrigo Nogueira Machado [Lecturer biography]. Sites.google.com. Retrieved June 28, 2026, from https://sites.google.com/view/sssls26/lecturers/rodrigo-nogueira-machado
  2. Escavador. (n.d.). Rodrigo Nogueira Machado [Curriculum profile based on Currículo Lattes data]. Retrieved June 28, 2026, from https://www.escavador.com/sobre/4536748/rodrigo-nogueira-machado
  3. Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Repositório Institucional. (2022). O processo de empréstimos lingüísticos na libras: modalidades e categorização [Abstract and metadata record]. Retrieved June 28, 2026, from https://www.repositorio.ufal.br/jspui/handle/123456789/12877
  4. Machado, R. N. (2022). O processo de empréstimos lingüísticos na libras: modalidades e categorização [Doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal de Alagoas]. Repositório Institucional UFAL. https://www.repositorio.ufal.br/bitstream/123456789/12877/1/O%20processo%20de%20empr%c3%a9stimos%20ling%c3%bc%c3%adsticos%20na%20libras%20%20modalidades%20e%20categoriza%c3%a7%c3%a3o.pdf
  5. Google Scholar. (n.d.). Rodrigo Nogueira Machado [Author citation profile]. Retrieved June 28, 2026, from https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=T6DyG0IAAAAJ
  6. Editora Contexto. (n.d.). Rodrigo Nogueira Machado [Author page]. Retrieved June 28, 2026, from https://www.editoracontexto.com.br/autores/r2/rodrigo-nogueira-machado/c
  7. Karnopp, L. B., & Machado, R. N. (2006). Literatura Surda: ver histórias em língua de sinais. In Anais do 2º Seminário Brasileiro de Estudos Culturais em Educação (pp. 1–13). ULBRA.