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What I Do

I'm a Brazilian Journalist with over 20 years of experience reporting on my country. After almost 10 years as BBC correspondent in Rio, I now work as a freelancer covering Brazil and the region for some of the world's leading media companies, with bylines on NPR, BBC News, The Guardian and NatGeo. As a bilingual multimedia reporter, I move smoothly between text (print & digital), audio (radio and podcasts) and video pieces; and between Portuguese and English. I'm a member of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. I'm a people person and a nature person, and I am passionate about environment, climate, solutions journalism and human interest stories. I'm a proud recipient of the 2025 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards.

Júlia Dias Carneiro

Freelance Journalist in Rio



Some of my Latest Work

Awards

Featured Articles

Explore a featured selection of my reporting below.

AP News •

Brazilian dance craze created by young people in Rio’s favelas is declared cultural heritage

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — It all started with nifty leg movements, strong steps backwards and forwards, paced to Brazilian funk music. Then it adopted moves from break dancing, samba, capoeira, frevo — whatever was around. The passinho, a dance style created in the 2000s by kids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, was declared in March to be an “intangible cultural heritage” by legislators in the state of Rio, bringing recognition to a cultural expression born in the sprawling working-class neighborhoods.Th...

Featured TV & Video Work

BBC News •

Rio: An education clouded by violence

Samir wants to be a veterinarian and Samira wants to be a dentist. The 11-year-old Brazilian twins have just finished the school year but before they can set out on their dream careers they have to overcome some hurdles in their education. They have missed countless schooldays this year because of frequent shoot-outs in their area. According to the city hall education office, 129,000 students in Rio de Janeiro had classes cancelled at least once between January and October because of outbreaks of...
BBC News •

Brazil leader's crisis in six phrases

Brazil expects another round of big anti-government demonstrations on Sunday. There is growing anger against the government, hit by a worsening economic situation, a massive corruption scandal and boycotts to austerity measures in Congress. Many are calling for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, who is only eight months into her second mandate, but currently there is no proven legal basis for that. Even Brazilians have a hard time explaining how the situation grew into such an imbrogli...
BBC News •

Brazilian music stars back together

Brazilian music would not have developed as it did over the past decades if it hadn't been for Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, two of the country's most important musicians. They were central figures of the Tropicalia movement in the late 1960s, which revolutionised Brazilian music by embracing foreign influences and experimenting with different styles.Now aged 72, they are getting together to tour Europe to celebrate 50 years of their careers. Two Friends, One Century of Music is their first t...
Denilson Baniwa: Reinventing the Americas •

Denilson Baniwa: Reinventing the Americas

Indigenous artist Denilson Baniwa uses his art to expose how colonial representations have erased the culture and denied the humanity of Indigenous Americans. For the exhibition Reinventing the Américas, Baniwa collaborated with the Getty Research Institute to generate video artworks, installations, and interventions on historical objects. Julia Dias Carneiro was a field producer for this documentary portraying this work.
BBC News •

Brazil dam burst: Six months on, the marks left by sea of sludge

Six months ago, the collapse of a mining dam near the city of Mariana, in the state of Minas Gerais, released a torrent of sludge that killed 19 people, wiped out villages and became the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history. The deluge travelled more than 600km (370 miles) before spilling into the Atlantic, leaving a trail of destruction along the Doce River that interrupted water supply in dozens of cities along its course. The iron ore mine was run by Samarco, a joint-venture betw...

Audio Documentaries