We remember Allane and Layse for who they were in life, and for what they loved and made. Allane was a pedagogue, researcher, and educator, and she was also a musician and a mother to a thirteen-year-old daughter. Singing, playing percussion, composing, and moving within samba communities were central to how she lived, connected, and imagined futures. Layse was a psychologist whose work centred on listening, accompaniment, and care, particularly within educational spaces. Her labour was grounded in attentiveness to others and in the everyday work of sustaining mental health, dignity, and possibility. Their lives were full, relational, and shaped by commitments to education, creativity, and care.
To mourn them is to refuse the narrowing of their lives to the moment of their deaths. It is also to recognise that this violence did not emerge in a vacuum. Feminist thinking has long taught us that gendered violence is structural, produced through institutional cultures that tolerate misogyny, disregard warning signs, and fail to act with care and responsibility. Educational institutions are not outside these dynamics. They are shaped by them, even as they are often imagined as spaces of safety, critical thought, and protection.
In this case, there were prior reports and concrete warnings about the perpetrator, yet he was allowed to return to the institution. We join others in demanding clear and public accountability on the following questions: Why did the school’s leadership fail to act on multiple reports of violent behaviour associated with him? How was he able to enter CEFET-RJ carrying a firearm? These are not secondary questions. They point to institutional decisions and omissions that made this violence possible.
The #FeministReviewCollective writes in sorrow and solidarity following the killing of Allane de Souza Pedrotti Matos and Layse Costa Pinheiro at the Federal Centre for Technological Education of Rio de Janeiro. We join a collective space of mourning, shaped by shared grief, anger, and care.
