Débora Póvoa is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Arts and Culture Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on power and place dynamics involved in the development of the creative industries, particularly film and tourism, in the Global South.

Débora obtained her PhD (cum laude) in March 2023, with the dissertation Film tourism in Brazil: Local perspectives on media, power and place. In this project, she analyzes the development of film tourism initiatives in vulnerable locations in the country from the perspective of local stakeholders. She reveals that film tourism benefits are often perceived as temporary – a phenomenon she called the “telenovela effect” – and that the success and sustainability of creative projects depend on a series of contextual circumstances of places and power dynamics between people. Now, in her postdoctoral research, she continues exploring these issues from a policymaking perspective, focusing on the role and influence of institutional stakeholders, such as film commissions, on audiovisual and tourism ecologies in Brazil.

Débora also holds Master’s degree in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She is a board member of the Erasmus Knowledge Centre for Film, Heritage and Tourism (FIHETO), film review editor of the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (ERLACS) and selection committee member of the International Science Film Festival Nijmegen (InScience).