Manuela de Mattos Salazar is a Koias Fellow at the Kobe Institute of Atmospheric Studies, Kobe University, and a Research Associate in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex. Her research explores how everyday experience shapes media and aesthetic practices, focusing on atmospheres, aesthetic categories, and visual culture.

She holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the University of Sussex, funded by CAPES (Brazil). Her doctoral project, Cosy Vibes: Cosiness as an Atmospheric Aesthetic Category, examines “cosy” as one of the many aesthetic categories of Instagram, but specifically an atmospheric aesthetic category, which mediates relations between aesthetics, digital culture, domesticity and the sensorial.

Before her PhD, she completed a Master’s degree in Communication at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), where she researched the aestheticization of everyday life on Instagram. This work resulted in her book Mundo Mosaico: A estetização do cotidiano no Instagram (Kotter Editorial, 2018), which examines vernacular photography and the formation of aesthetic sensibilities in social media culture.

She has taught media and visual culture at the University of Sussex and collaborates with no.ar – Laboratory of Research on Everyday Life and Technology (UFF), contributing to projects on affect, atmosphere, and democratization in Brazil.