Cláudio da Silva

From Asia to Oceania

This connection with Papua New Guinea began in 2011, while I was still living in Japan, through an educational project in which my students began exchanging letters with students at Madina Primary School, located in a Nalik community in New Ireland Province. The correspondence between the two schools continued over the following years and, for some time, was my only form of contact with the school and the community.
In 2014, when I left Japan, I travelled to Papua New Guinea for the first time. I wanted to meet in person the school, students, and community with whom I had, until then, been connected only from a distance. That first visit brought a new dimension to a relationship that had begun three years earlier through my students'  penpal letter exchange.
It was through this closer contact with the Nalik community that my interest in birds also took on a different meaning. In conversations and activities in the villages, birds appeared in connection with clans, stories, and songs, as well as with knowledge about the environment and aspects of everyday life. Until then, I had known birds mainly through biology; in this context, I was beginning to encounter other ways of knowing and understanding them.
This experience opened the way to a new stage. Between 2015 and 2016, I returned to New Ireland Province to carry out my research in the Social Education, Development and Local Dynamics Masters Programme at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, working with the school and the community. The study, entitled Birds in Nalik Culture: (Re)Discovering the Community’s Voice through Action Research, was developed through a participatory process and deepened a relationship that had begun several years earlier with the exchange of letters.
My research about birds also raised new questions about education, local knowledge, and the relationships between schools and communities. These questions would become increasingly important in the work I carried out later in New Ireland.

At the same time, education came to play an increasingly important role in my professional path. I worked as a science and biology teacher in Brazil and later in Japan, where I lived for nine years and taught Brazilian students at schools serving immigrant communities. Living in Japan and working every day with students and families building their lives across different languages, cultural references, and senses of belonging broadened my interest in the relationships between education and culture.
It was during this period that Papua New Guinea first became part of my journey. What began through encounters and interests that, at the time, seemed far removed from the path I had started years earlier in biology eventually led me to another context, new questions, and, later, ethnographic research. Interestingly, it was along this new path that birds would appear once again, no longer simply as animals I was interested in observing and studying, but as part of the stories, knowledge, and relationships I would come to encounter in Papua New Guinea.

Tatanua (Nit) dance mask from New Ireland Province, used during malagan ceremonies. From the collection of the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, Hungary (Volker, 2019)

During a practical activity in a science lesson with my students at Escola Brasileira Professor Kawase, Ogaki, Japan (2012)

Handling a suindara owl (Tyto furcata), at the Associação Mata Ciliar, an NGO I worked with in Jundiaí, São Paulo State, Brazil (2004)

During an activity with students at Madina Primary School, New Ireland Province (Volker, 2016)

After completing my master’s degree in 2017, I continued returning to Papua New Guinea to develop projects with other communities in New Ireland Province. Over time, my research increasingly came to focus on the relationships between education, languages, and Indigenous knowledge.
Although the school has remained an important setting for my research, much of my work also takes place beyond the school, through everyday life in the villages, conversations, and daily activities with students, teachers, elders, community leaders, and other community members. These experiences broadened the questions that came to guide my research, particularly how knowledge developed and passed on within communities is recognized in schools, and how different ways of knowing, teaching, and learning might be brought into dialogue.
These questions currently guide my doctoral research in the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the University of Porto, where I study the integration of Indigenous knowledge into the school curriculum and the possibilities for dialogue between schools and communities.

From Field Experience to My Current Research

Presenting my work to students at Kansai University, Japan (Volker, 2016)

During an event at Langenia Primary School, New Ireland Province (Volker, 2024)

I am Cláudio da Silva, a researcher and educator with a background and experience in biology, education, and the social sciences. I was born in Brazil and currently live in Coimbra, Portugal.
My professional path began in the biological sciences and, over the years, gradually moved closer to education and, later, to ethnographic research. These changes were neither planned nor part of separate stages. Rather, they took shape through the places where I lived, my professional experiences, and, above all, the people and contexts I became involved with along the way.
In Brazil, I worked in zoos and non-governmental organizations, developing activities in environmental education, ornithological research, and wildlife management. Among the different areas of biology, birds have always held a particular interest for me. This fascination began in childhood, when I took part in birdwatching clubs, and continued throughout my training and work as a biologist, when I also began studying birds in the wild. Observing birds, identifying species, and trying to understand their behaviour were, at that time, part of how I engaged with and learned about the environments in which I worked.

Photo: Volker, 2017

da Silva, C., Volker, C. A., Pereira, F., & Amorim, J. P. (2026). Bridging Indigenous knowledges and formal education through a community-led cultural initiative. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education. In press.

da Silva, C. (2025). Voices of New Ireland: Kun and Nochi Wisdom. Education Projects International LLC.

da Silva, C., Pereira, F., & Amorim, J. P. (2023). The integration of indigenous knowledge in school: A systematic review. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2023.2184200

da Silva, C. & Volker, C. A. (2022). Integrating local traditional wisdom into school: an example from Papua Guinea. In International Year of Indigenous Languages - IYIL 2019 UNESCO, 33-39. Paris: UNESCO, 2022.

da Silva, C., & Volker, C. A. (2021). Indigenous knowledge and language revival in post-colonial education in Papua New Guinea. Journal on Asian Linguistic Anthropology, 3(1), 76–98. https://doi.org/10.47298/jala.v3-i1-a4

da Silva, C., & Volker, C. A. (2018). A Maani: Birds and Nalik Culture. Education Projects International LLC.

da Silva, C. (2017). Escolas brasileiras no Japão: Uma análise a partir do contexto migratório. Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies, 5(2), 410–428. https://doi.org/10.25160/bjbs.v5i2.25363

da Silva, C. (2010). Alterações na comunidade de aves do Morro de Araçoiaba (Floresta Nacional de Ipanema, FLONA – Iperó, SP). Revista Conhecimento Online, 2, 32–67. https://doi.org/10.25112/rco.v2i0.145

A Selection of My Publications

Academic and research profile:

ORCID - Publications, projects, and research activities

ResearchGate - Publications, projects, and research activities

ESfO (European Society for Oceanists) - Research profile on Pacific-studies.net

CIIE - Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Educativas
Research profile at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto

CiênciaVitae - Academic and research CV

Photo: Volker, 2017

Cláudio da Silva
Research, Education, and Lived Experiences in Papua New Guinea

claudio@clausilva.eu

© 2026 Cláudio da Silva