Guilherme Fians is a Honorary Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews. He is also a Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Research Development Officer at the University of Manchester. Guilherme holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester and has previously held teaching and research positions at the universities of Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Manchester, São Paulo, Brasília, and Massachusetts Amherst.

Guilherme’s research has centred on the global impacts of print and digital media on political activism and content production. His current project focuses on Wikipedia editors and digital influencers, exploring how internet users increasingly frame user-generated content – ranging from Wikipedia articles to memes – as collective property. His most recent work analyses an edit war on Wikipedia to explore how terms like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are deployed as empty signifiers, supporting a technoliberal rhetoric in which authorship and accountability are reframed rather than erased.

In a previous project (2015-2021), Guilherme carried out online and face-to-face fieldwork among Esperanto speakers in France, investigating how Esperanto – once deemed ‘the language of the future’ – has recently gained new momentum among alterglobalisation activists, as well as among programmers advocating for Esperanto as an ‘open-source language’. This culminated in his latest monograph, Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks (2021).

Previously, Guilherme's interest in the intergenerational transmission of language and knowledge led him to a project on meaning-making among children and youth. In line with his commitment to multilingualism in academia, Guilherme has published and communicated his research outcomes in English, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish, and Esperanto.

Late Modern History, Media and Translation, Digital Anthropology and Digital Humanities, Language Politics, Social Movements, Western Europe and Latin America.