Alice Mara Serra studied history from 1995 to 1999 and philosophy from 2001 to 2003 at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) as well as fine arts from 2011 to 2017 at the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG) in Brazil. She earned her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Freiburg (Germany) with a thesis on Freud (Archäologie des (Un)bewussten: Freuds frühe Untersuchung der Erinnerungsschichtung und Husserls Phänomenologie des Unbewussten). Since 2012 she has been a professor of contemporary philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, UFMG. She works in the fields of contemporary aesthetics/image theory, epistemology, phenomenology, and contemporary French philosophy. During her stay in Berlin, she is doing research on a project entitled Phenomenlogy of Image Consciousness, Deconstruction and Imaginary Foundations.

The Capes-Humboldt Research Fellowship program is a joint fellowship program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Brazilian research funding organization Capes (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). According to data published by the Humboldt Foundation, through its various programs and research awards, the Foundation annually enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to do research in Germany. The Foundation maintains a network of more than 28,000 alumni across all fields of research in more than 140 countries.