As humanity faces converging crises—from climate change and biodiversity loss to pandemics and food insecurity—it is increasingly clear that the health of people is inseparable from the health of the planet. Planetary Health offers an integrated, transdisciplinary framework that addresses these interconnected challenges by placing human well-being within the context of Earth’s natural systems.

While COP30 (to be held in Belém, Brazil in 2025) represents a critical political moment to advance climate action globally, education remains a powerful yet underleveraged lever for long-term transformation. Embedding Planetary Health into education systems - from primary schools to professional training - can empower citizens, leaders, and communities with the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to co-create a sustainable and equitable future.

This event seeks to explore the role of Planetary Health education in preparing societies for the urgent transitions demanded by the climate crisis, aligning with COP30’s agenda and the broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and building upon Planetary Health Educational Framework, developed by the Planetary Health Alliance. The participants, organized into panels, will address Planetary Health education initiatives at different scales, ages, contexts, and geographies, discussing success factors and challenges.

Important: Brasília time (GMT-3) is being considered on this page, referring to the in-person activities. The program below includes EST and GMT besides the Brazilian time.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is mandatory
For in-person attendance please send a message to contatosaudeplanetaria@usp.br (limited seats available)
For online access please register here
Online event via (https://www.youtube.com/@saudeplanetaria)

Organization

Planetary Health Brazil (IEA/USP)

Program

With COP30 convening in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon basin, we are reminded that the question of habitability – of what makes Earth a home for life – can no longer be taken for granted. Extreme climate events, toxic landscapes, and deepening socio-ecological fractures expose the fragility of the systems that sustain planetary life. The Planetary Health movement has shown that the health of human beings cannot be separated from the health of the Earth’s living systems. Yet, our current trajectory points toward a profound habitability crisis, in which the planetary conditions of human and more-than-human cohabitation are under threat.

This two-day event brings together scholars, artists, and practitioners to think and act from within this crisis. Rooted in the frameworks of planetary health and planetary thinking, it seeks to explore the interconnected crises of environment, society, and meaning that define our time, asking: How can we inhabit a damaged planet? What forms of knowledge, care, and transformative thinking are needed to guarantee cohabitation between human and more-than-human life.

The event proposes planetability as a critical concept – a lens through which to rethink the conditions for sustaining more-than-only-human life amid collapse, inequity, and transformation. Rather than viewing planetability as a static or technical issue, participants will approach it as a relational, ethical, and aesthetic practice, bridging scientific, indigenous, and artistic perspectives on what it means to inhabit the Earth.

Important: Brasília time (GMT-3) is being considered on this page, referring to the in-person activities. The program below considers the CET.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is mandatory (click here)
Online event (https://www.youtube.com/@saudeplanetaria and https://www.youtube.com/@catedramartius) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and Portuguese with simultaneous interpretation

Organization

Planetary Health Brazil (IEA/USP)

Martius Germany-Brazil Chair in Humanities and Sustainability (DAAD-USP)

PROBRAL Program (CAPES-DAAD) "Planet-ability": Integrating Planetary Health and Multispecies Cohabitation in Urban Design and Research

Program

This lecture will explore key factors influencing brain health throughout life, focusing on the impact of nutrition, lifestyle, and preventive strategies on cognitive well-being. MSc. Estevez will present the latest scientific insights on the framework of brain health optimization and future directions for brain health policy, research and data.

Lecturer

Diana Estevez (WHO)

Nutritionist graduated from the University of São Paulo (2011) and holder of a MSc in Applied Human Nutrition from the Interunits programme PRONUT, a joint masters program from USP's economy, pharmacy, and public health schools. Estevez has experience in Nutrition, acting on the following subjects: noncommunicable diseases, cardiovascular risk, public health and policies.

Coordination and moderation

Elizabeth Torres (USP's School of Public Health and IEA)

Registration

Free and public event | Prior registration required
Online event (http://youtube.com/@iea-usp) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and no simultaneous translation into Portuguese will be provided

Programme

9:00 am | Welcome session
9:30 am | Lecture
10:20 am | Discussion and reflections
11:00 am | Closure

Professor Jan Carson will discuss her writing and delve into her themes, writing style, and her journey as a Northern Irish writer. The event is part of the 2025 opening of the W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies.

Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Her latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024 and Scribner (US) in July 2024. Her writing has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE. She is the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic, The Velveteen Rabbit will be produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel, Few and Far Between is forthcoming in early 2026.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
Online event (http://youtube.com/@iea-usp) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and no simultaneous translation into Portuguese will be provided

Professor Martin Carnoy will discuss unequal increases in Brazilian schools scores  since 2000. In the recent study, student achievement gains in Brazil among municipalities (2007–2017) is analyzed  with the goal of understanding the variation in these gains and the socioeconomic, race, and school resource correlates of that variation.

Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and former president of the Comparative and International Education Society and a fellow of the National Academy of Education and of the International Academy of Education. He has written forty books and more than 150 articles on the economic value of education, on the political economy of educational policy, on educational production, and on higher education. Much of his work is comparative and international and investigates the way educational systems are organized.

In Brazil, he has been supporting the Programa de Especialização Docente PED Brasil - a network of Brazilian Universities for  Teacher Education - since its inception.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
Online event (http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and no simultaneous translation into Portuguese will be provided

Professor Rache Lotan will present the evidence-based pedagogical approach developed at Stanford University over five decades ago. Deepened and extended by the work of scholars, teachers, and researchers in numerous countries around the world to support equitable, excellent, and democratic classrooms for diverse student populations in heterogeneous classrooms. It emphasizes equal-status interactions among students and specifies the conditions under which teachers can establish and support such interactions.

Mediation: Roseli de Deus Lopes (IEA)

Presenter: Rachel Lotan, Professor Emerita and the former Director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP)

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
Online event (http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and no simultaneous translation into Portuguese will be provided

For a long time, Latin America seemed to be one of the success stories of the “third wave” of democratization. Following democratic transitions in the 1980s and early 1990s, most countries in the region appeared to be on the path to democratic consolidation in the 2000s and early 2010s. In recent years, however, Latin America’s democratic consolidation has begun to unravel amid major populist challenges from both the left and the right. The global “polycrisis” with interlocking challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, economic recession, climate change, and the increasingly assertive role of autocratic powers like China and Russia is exerting further pressures on democratic regimes.

This workshop will study the current trends of democratic regression and autocratization, but also instances of resilience and possibilities to defend democracy in Latin America. It will explore the ambiguous relationship between populism and democracy as well as the connections between democracy and (economic and political) liberalism.

Opening: José Álvaro Moisés (IEA)

Presenters: Aaron Schneider (University of Denver), Carlos Meléndez and Lisa Zanotti (Universidad Diego Portales), and Thomas Legler (Universidad Iberoamericana).

Chair: Brigitte Weiffen (The Open University)

Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

IPSA Research Committee 34 Quality of Democracy (https://www.ipsa.org/page/rc34-quality- democracy)
Quality of Democracy Research Group at the IEA

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
Online event (http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo) | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese

Programme

When asked about humanity’s future relationship with computers, Marvin Minsky famously replied “If we’re lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets”. A number of eminent authorities continue to argue that there is a real danger that “super-intelligent” machines will enslave — perhaps even destroy — humanity.

One might think that it would swiftly follow that we should abandon the pursuit of AI. Instead, most of those who purport to be concerned about the existential threat posed by AI default to worrying about what they call the “Friendly AI problem”. Roughly speaking this is the question of how we might ensure that the AI’s that will develop from the first AI that we create will remain sympathetic to humanity and continue to serve, or at least take account of, our interests.

In this talk Sparrow will draw on the “neo-republican” philosophy of Philip Pettit to argue that solving the Friendly AI problem would not change the fact that the advent of super-intelligent AI would be disastrous for humanity by virtue of rendering us the slaves of machines. A key insight of the republican tradition is that freedom requires equality of a certain sort, which is clearly lacking between pets and their owners. Benevolence is not enough.

As long as AI has the power to interfere in humanity’s choices, and the capacity to do so without reference to our interests, then it will dominate us and thereby render us unfree.

The pets of kind owners are still pets, which is not a status which humanity should embrace. If we really think that there is a risk that research on AI will lead to the emergence of a superintelligence then we need to think again about the wisdom of researching AI at all.

Opening remarks: Virgílio Almeida (Oscar Sala Chair)

Presenter: Robert Sparrow (Monash University)

Moderation: Elen Nas (IEA-USP)

Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

Oscar Sala Chair

Partnership

Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br)
Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br)

Support

C4AI - Center for Artificial Intelligence

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and will be simultaneous translation into Portuguese

Researchers from three Brazilian universities and two European universities will meet for an international work meeting. The group, which debates scientific education in the risk society, will meet between the February 20 and 22 in São Paulo (São Paulo), and on the 23rd in Vitória (Espírito Santo) and Brasília (DF).

In addition, seven other researchers from different Brazilian universities will be present at the meetings to exchange experiences and present projects.

Support

São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)

Registration

Free and public event | Registration is not required
No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese

Programme

20/02

21/02 (Live transmission at www.iea.usp.br/aovivo)

22/02

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

1st International Symposium on Sustainable Aging and Planetary Health, and 1st NAPENV International Meeting on Intrinsic Capacity

Sustainable Aging is a complex process. Understanding the factors that favor or limit it is mandatory so that strategies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be implemented. Intrinsic capacity is one of these factors. Although it is a determinant of successful aging, the translation of this knowledge to sustainable aging and planetary health is still scarce. This symposium aims to bring together researchers from different regions of the world to promote a debate on the intrinsic capacity and health care strategy for older people in order to promote actions that contribute to achieving the SDGs and planetary health. It is linked to IEA's Sabbatical Year Program.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration required
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

Sabbatical Year Program (IEA-USP)
Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre o Envelhecimento e o Idoso (NAPENV)

Programme

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

Bodies, Territories, and Policies in the Production of Peripheral Spaces

This hybrid international seminar aims to explore critical feminist research projects and new epistemologies based on women's urban struggles around the production of peripheral territories.

The event inaugurates a series of seminars supported by the Urban Studies Foundation, whose focus is the feminist struggle in the production and transformation of peripheral territories in different contexts of the Global South, particularly Southern Africa and Latin America.

Special lectures by researchers involved in critical feminist studies will be included, as well as panel discussions of selected abstracts*.

*181 high-quality abstracts have been submitted. An effort was made to include as much regional diversity as possible, observing thematic groupings.

The preliminary program of oral presentations in November, still subject to change, is available here.

Coordination

Paula Freire Santoro (IEA Sabbatical Year Program/FAU-USP)
Priscila Izar (Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Carolina Lunetta (Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Netherlands)

Registration

Free and public event | Registration required | Call for papers CLOSED
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies (CUBES), University of the Witwatersrand
Sabbatical Year Program (IEA-USP)
Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo (FAU-USP)
Institute of Human Settlement Studies (IHSS), Archi University
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

The GO FAIR Brazil Agriculture and Biodiversity Thematic Networks invites to this lecture, which will address issues related to the FAIR principles, and to the construction and organization of ontologies through the presentation of AgroPortal and OntoPortal. Anyone interested in the topics of construction, organization, provision, and use of ontologies will be able to benefit from the presentation.

Presenter

Clement Jonquet (INRAE-MISTEA/University of Montpellier-LIRMM)

Moderator

Débora Drucker (EMBRAPA)

Registration

Free and public event | Registration required
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

Planetary Health

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be useful in promoting sustainability in many ways. It can facilitate predicting climate events, identifying human activities capable of harming forests and environmental preservation areas, and optimizing production processes, thus reducing their environmental impacts.

However, the development and application of AI models are not free from environmental consequences.

There are growing discussions, for instance, on the carbon footprint of training machine learning models and the impacts of extractive activities necessary for producing equipment linked to AI. The seminar will address these two sides of the relationship between AI and sustainability.

This event is part of the "Challenges and Opportunities in AI - Sectoral Perspectives" seminar cycle.

This initiative intends to create spaces for exchanges between researchers and representatives of the private sector so that we can reflect on regulatory solutions in favour of maximizing the benefits of AI and minimizing its risks.

Presenter

Carlos Silva (Lead R&D Science, Pachama)
Gustavo Pinheiro (iCS)

Debater

Miriam Garcia (CDP Latin America)

Moderator

Rodrigo Brandão (IEA-USP/NIC.br) e Veridiana Cordeiro (IEA-USP)

Registration

Free and public event | No registration required
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

IEA Research Group on Innovation and Competitiveness

Support

Brazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES)
Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI)
Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br)
Center for Artificial Intelligence (C4AI)

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google, has global responsibility for the company's knowledge and information products. He and his team of technologists and engineers around the world run many popular Google products, including Google Search, News, Maps, Advertising, Assistant, Commerce, and Pay.

Having moved from the research lab to the operational reality of leading a search engine, Raghavan will share some of the pressing research, policy, and societal issues facing internet search engines and society with a particular focus on information quality and the potential of artificial intelligence. This is a rare opportunity to learn more about the diversity of technical and regulatory issues that can affect today's digital environment directly from the source.

Raghavan is one of the world's leading technologists and has over 20 years of experience in search algorithms, web search and databases. He has published over 100 articles, issued 20 patents, and has written two graduate textbooks. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, of the Association of Computing Machinery, and og the global Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has been a consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he met Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were his students.

Free and public event | Registration is required for in-person attendance (free tickets here)
The event will be held in English and there will be simultaneous translation into Portuguese

It is recommended to arrive at the venue at least 15 minutes in advance.

Organization

Google

Partners

IEA

Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME-USP)

Clique aqui para a versão em Português

Philosopher of science Kevin C. Elliott will address two urgent topics in this event: scientific diversity and open science. Regarding the first, he will present the results of his recent collaborative research project, which has polled more than 3500 scientists to investigate the factors that hinder the presence of diversity in science. During his presentation, the ethical and epistemic reasons for promoting diversity in the scientific community will also be discussed.

Regarding open science, Elliott will discuss how it can better approach non-experts in addition to commenting on the multiple meanings, reasons, and limits that the value of transparency acquires in this context.

After the lecture, guest professors will engage in a discussion to bring specific elements of such themes in Brazil. The audience will have the opportunity to dialogue with the main speaker.

Opening:

Pedro Bravo de Souza (University of São Paulo)

Presenter:

Kevin C. Elliott (Michigan State University)

Free and public event | No registration required
(*) Online and on-site event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

IEA's Research Group on Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology

Programme