Amaya Sumpsi is a visual anthropologist and film director based in Portugal since 2001, where she has developed her artistic and research career to date. She has been a researcher in CRIA-FCSH/UNL (2016-2023) and CIES-ISCTE/UL (2023-2025). With university degrees in Literature and Cinema from Madrid (Universidad Complutense) and California (USF), she initially worked as a fiction film director, but she soon realized that reality was her strongest source of inspiration, leading her toward documentary filmmaking. A Master’s degree in Visual Anthropology at NOVA-FCSH became an unexpected and decisive turning point in her career. Her master´s thesis was based on a 7 year-long ethnography in an Azorean fisherman community and the result was twofold: the written thesis Caught in the Net and the film Fisherman My Old Man (2012), each reaching different audiences and earning research and artistic prizes (see CV) demonstrating how the synergy of these processes enriches her work. Since then, she has consistently defended the importance of the interplay between artistic practices and social sciences, both through her active role in the academic community and in her own projects. During her PhD in Anthropology (FCSH_UNL) —a study of sea circulation in the Azores with a focus on the decades of the 60s and 70s—her camera once again served as a field notebook, while her anthropological reflections became a source of cinematic inspiration. The written thesis Between Islands: Ethnographies of Circulation in the Azores received the Octávio Lixa Filgueiras research prize (Museu Marítimo de Ilhavo), and the film Between Islands was screened in Portuguese commercial cinemas and at numerous academic and artistic events, national and international wide. In 2023, it was nominated by the Portuguese Academy of Cinema for Best Documentary and in 2025 was exhibited by the public TV (RTP1). During her doctoral research, she also co-directed the ethnographic film A Ramadan in Lisbon, a collaborative project within the Visual Anthropology Laboratory (NOVA FCSH) that followed the Muslim community in Lisbon. It premiered at IndieLisboa Festival (2019), was broadcast on public television, and was later shown in educational, social, and cinematic contexts. Since 2024, she has been working with the same interdisciplinary group on the film project Ir à Maré (FCT PROJECT: Liminal Waterway Countercultures), which follows the resilient, self-managed community of Culatra Island (Algarve). Since 2023, she has also been doing ethnography and writing the script for her first feature fiction film , "Ruta 5", actually in development. In parallel, she has actively promoted the intersections between arts and social sciences within academia, particularly as a teacher (ISCTE) and as coordinator of NAVA (Research Group of Visual Anthropology and Arts – CRIA). She has also actively participated in the launching of international networks, organization of conferences, panels, seminars, talks and festivals, and she has published several articles and chapters. She has also been invited as a jury for numerous ethnographic and documentary film festivals . In 2023, she joined the University of Lisbon’s Sociology Research Centre (CIES-IUL) as a postdoctoral researcher with audiovisual expertise in the European project AspirE – Asian Prospects in (Re)migration to/within the EU. Leading a work package across 11 research centres in Europe and Asia, she has coordinated the creation and analysis of an international audiovisual database of video-diaries, navigating complex intercultural and ethical challenges. For this same project, she is the curator of the exhibition “Lives between Asia and Europe: a visual journey”, where she will share a photograph and a video installation. The exhibition will be launched the 24th of October 2025 at ISCTE (UL).