Beatriz Caiuby Labate was born in São Paulo in 1971. She earned a bachelor’s degree in social science from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in 1996. In 2000 she obtained a master’s degree in social anthropology from the same university, receiving the Prize for Best Master’s Thesis from the National Association for Graduate Studies in Social Science (ANPOCS). In 2011 she received her PhD in social anthropology at UNICAMP. She is co-editor of the books O uso ritual da ayahuasca (Mercado de Letras 2002, 2004 2º ed.), O uso ritual das plantas de poder (Mercado de Letras, 2005), Drogas e cultura: novas perspectivas (Edufba 2008), Ayahuasca, Ritual and Religion in Brazil (Equinox, 2010) and co-editor of the special edition Light from the Forest: The Ritual Use of Ayahuasca in Brazil (Journal Fieldwork in Religion 2.3, 2006 – published in 2008), author of the book A reinvenção do uso da ayahuasca nos centros urbanos (Mercado de Letras, 2004), co-author of the book Religiões ayahuasqueiras: um balanço bibliográfico (Mercado de Letras, 2008), translated into english as Ayahuasca Religions: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Critical Essays (MAPS, 2009) and Música Brasileira de Ayahuasca (Mercado de Letras, 2009), translated into English as Opening the Portals of Heaven: Brazilian Ayahuasca Music (Lit Verlag, in press). She is a researcher with the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP) and editor of its site (www.neip.info).
Since 2009 she is Research Associate at the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
