Kalinca Costa Söderlund holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex. Her research projects were funded by the Arts and Humanity Research Council (AHRC).

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Her PhD Supervisor was Professor Emerita Valerie Fraser, who has worked on a number of exhibitions including Kahlo's Contemporaries held at the University Gallery in 2005, and Latin American Art: Contexts and Accomplices at the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, 2004. Her PhD Internal Examiner was Professor Emerita Dawn Ades, a Fellow of the British Academy, a former trustee of Tate, and Professor of the History of Art at the Royal Academy. Ades was awarded a CBE in 2013 for her services to art history.

Kalinca's thesis analyses art in Brazil from earlier 20th century modernismo to the official arrival of abstractionism at the MAM-SP in 1949. It is divided in two parts, and considers the political and socio-cultural realities and the nationalist and internationalist currents that underpinned the two art historical periods. Part 1 covers the first phase of modernismo (1917-1929) and argues that, whilst acting towards the renovation of Brazil’s aesthetic-literary realm, the movement challenged the political discourse on racial difference and white supremacy implied in the academicist view, thus it undermined the ‘coloniality of power’ inherent in the traditional academic rhetoric. It also argues that on the international front, Brazilian modernismo was original because it extracted from the primitive reference a counter-narrative to Western epistemology. Part 2 analyses modernismo from 1930 to the MAM-SP’s first international abstract art exhibition of 1949. One of its main arguments is that State patronage, during the Vargas populist dictatorship, appropriated the emancipatory programme of 1920s modernismo and turned it into an ideological representation of the nation. The State not only turned this programme into propaganda, but also facilitated its canonisation. The other main argument is that international abstractionism arrived in Brazil thanks to the intersection between the growing need for an international art institution in the country, and the agendas of national and international free-enterprise capitalism.The thesis establishes a dialogue between the art historical period chosen, and the evolution of patronage and art institutions in the country, thus it explores aspects of the complex relationship between art/culture and patronage/power. It identifies and discusses the two major roles played by patronage in the Brazilian field of cultural production during the first half of the 20th century, that is, its legitimising agency, and its participation in the culture war between aesthetic-literary reformers and traditionalists.

Kalinca’s research was presented internationally at symposia, congresses and conferences, and under the form of seminars and didactic initiatives. She has published articles on modernist artist Tarsila do Amaral, including in the RIHA Journal (2016), and on contemporary artist Laura Lima in the Journal of Art History by English publisher Routledge (2015).

She developed the 'Pocket Cinema' project (2012) for Bonniers Konsthall, the leading contemporary art space in Scandinavia. In Stockholm, she has also worked as Project Manager and Curator for Area 52, a contemporary art gallery. Kalinca curated ‘Evolving/Dissolving’ (2016), the gallery opening exhibition, showing works by Raha Rastifard (Pergamon Museum Collection, Berlin) and Sonny Sanjay Vadgama (Galerie Konrfeld, Berlin). More recently, she curated ‘Dreams of Male Power: A Fabrication Narrative' (2023) a Metaverse art exhibition on Spatial.io. She also authored the catalogue of this solo with works by contemporary Brazilian artist Marcelo Amorim.