The role of institutes for advanced study (IASs) based at universities, the preservation of their academic autonomy, the guarantee of funding, and the increase of their influence on the global scientific agenda were the main themes debated at the Directors' Conference of the international network of University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), held from November 4 to 6. The event was hosted by the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), located at the University of Ghana, in Accra.

The IEA/USP, one of the founding members of UBIAS, was represented by director Roseli de Deus Lopes and former director Guilherme Ary Plonski, currently a senior professor at the Institute. The gathering marked the 15th anniversary of the network, created at a meeting promoted by the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in October 2010.

Relevance

Plonski, who has already coordinated UBIAS's steering committee for three years, considered the conference very well-organized and relevant for the following main reasons.

• It was the first event of its kind held in Africa, reinforcing the global nature of the network. In the Americas, the milestone occurred in 2018. In Oceania, the last continent yet to be covered, it will happen in 2027.

• During the first two days of activities it was possible to delve into crucial themes in a rapidly transitioning world, such as knowledge production in the so-called Global South (with particular emphasis on Lopes' participation) and the challenge of boosting IASs by adding intersectorality to the basic characteristic of interdisciplinary studies and research.

• The quality of interactions between leaders of member institutes has strengthened ties that encourage collaborative actions over the next two years.

Global South

The theme of the first session of the conference was "Knowledge Production in the Global South: The Role of IASs in Shaping Regional and Global Research Agendas." According to Lopes, one of the speakers, the importance of IASs lies in the fact that they are spaces for independent, interdisciplinary, and risk-tolerant research with the time and freedom to cross scientific boundaries.

However, she observed that transposing the socioeconomic divide between the Global North and the Global South to the context of knowledge production can lead to distortions in the evaluation of the scientific contribution of developing countries. Feminist and decolonial intellectual currents consider that this results in the marginalization of scientific perspectives from the Global South, which has been called an epistemic injustice, with theories from the North being seen as universal.

Lopes cited several factors that prevent the fair participation of developing countries in international epistemological frameworks: the advantage of countries with English as their native language, the high cost of publishing in high-impact journals, restrictive criteria for measuring impact, barriers arising from compliance requirements in South-South collaborations, and unequal access to intellectual property and data.

Given these obstacles, she recommended three actions to the IASs: sharing legal models, ethical data governance, and microfinancing prior to granting research scholarships for South-South and South-North collaborations.

It is not enough for researchers from the Global South to participate in the international research system. They also need to be involved in setting the agendas of this system by proposing questions and methods, Lopes stated. Another need is the redefinition of scientometric criteria for evaluating preliminary, multilingual, and politically relevant results, she added.

From the perspective of the integration structure of researchers and research institutions from countries in the Global South, Lopes sees three levels to be considered: 1) agendas based on regional issues but with global reference points; 2) plural epistemologies and multilingual knowledge; 3) infrastructures for recognition and scaling up.

Some examples for level 1 are the resilience of tropical megacities, bioeconomy and biodiversity, and informal economy platforms. For level 2, Lopes mentions integrating the knowledge of indigenous peoples/traditional communities into academic methods and considering the translation of results into multiple languages ​​as part of academic activity. Open access to datasets produced in the Global South and fair evaluation of public policy labs, prototypes, and multilingual results apply to level 3.

Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA), located at the University of Ghana, in Accra.

Contributions of the IASs

Lopes said that there are characteristics and functions that only IASs can provide for encouraging inclusion in the international agenda: the offering of an interdisciplinary environment for experimentation by researchers and small research groups, and acting as a multifaceted bridge connecting universities, civil society, and the public and private sectors.

During the conference, Lopes and the directors of four other IASs were chosen to form the UBIAS Coordination Team. The concrete proposals for the network that she presented in the first session of the program somehow already foresee part of her future role in the team. They include the creation of a circuit of co-sponsored research stays at IASs in the Global South, the implementation of a multilingual platform with open access to abstracts and methodologies, public policy laboratories based on research results, mobility and microfinance programs, and a registration system for open methodologies and prototypes.

Intersectoriality

The sixth session of the conference was themed "Advancing the Advanced Institutes: Intersectorality Practices Around the World." Intersectorality was explored as a key path to growth in the complex social context. According to the organizers, IASs occupy a delicate position, oscillating between the pursuit of knowledge and being the link that unites the university and the wider world in which it is embedded.

Plonski participated in the session by presenting two IEA/USP initiatives involving Brazilian indigenous peoples, demonstrating that intersectorality is a regular practice of the Institute. One initiative was the appointment of indigenous leaders Arissana Pataxó, Francy Baniwa, and Sandra Benites as holders of the Olavo Setubal Chair - Transversalities: Art, Culture, Science, and Education in 2024. They developed the program "Caminho da Cutia: Territories and Knowledge of Indigenous Women." Computer scientist Claudio Pinhanez, a visiting professor at the Institute from May 2023 to May 2025, led his projects of applying digital technologies and artificial intelligence to produce tools for the use of Guarani and Nheengatu languages ​​in the digital environment by the peoples who speak them.

In addition to the sessions in which Lopes and Plonski were speakers, four other sessions took place throughout the conference. They had the following themes:

• AI and the Future of Knowledge Production;

• University-Based IASs, Institutional Autonomy, and Academic Freedom;

• IASs Impact;

• Funding Institutes of Advanced Study.

Trajectory of the IEA/USP

The launch of the book "Advanced in What? The Pioneering Trajectory of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo" also took place during the conference in Accra. It is the English version of the work that narrates the trajectory of the IEA/USP from its creation until 2023. The publication was presented by Plonski and Lopes, who brought copies for all the participants of the meeting. "We talked about the motivation, the production process, and the structure of the work. The book launched by our Institute is the pioneer among the publications associated with the 15 years of UBIAS, an opportune moment to take stock of the past and strategically rethink the continuity of the network," commented Plonski.

Photos: Guilherme Ary Plonski

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

Basic education has been one of IEA's priority topics since the early 1990s and has become increasingly prominent on the Institute's agenda as evidenced by the existence of three chairs currently dedicated to it. This focus is also reflected in the recurrence of related material in the journal Estudos Avançados, which now features one of the most comprehensive collections of articles on the subject ever presented by the publication.

Assessment Systems

Sociologist Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, holder of the Ayrton Senna Institute Chair for Innovation in Educational Assessment, based at IEA's Ribeirão Preto Center (IEA-RP), is one of the authors of the dossier "Basic Education," participating with a summary of some of the main trends in innovations introduced in international large-scale educational assessment systems, considering the need to improve Brazilian systems, according to her.

She believes it is crucial to improve the Basic Education Assessment System (SAEB) and the National High School Exam (ENEM), aligning them with the curricular changes implemented by the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC). Her article also examines the expansion of educational assessment research centers in Brazil and the excellence of research, providing telling evidence to inform national assessments and update the country's public education policy agendas.

The researcher says that the SAEB has undergone significant improvements that have increased its capacity for monitoring and assessing learning in Brazil since its creation in 1990, "but it has not introduced conceptual and methodological changes in the last 20 years." On the other hand, the BNCC requires profound changes in the assessments conducted by both SAEB and ENEM, "so that the tests assess the competencies and skills expected throughout basic education as well as new formats, concepts, and methodologies for large-scale assessments aligned with technological advances such as observed in international assessments."

She emphasizes that the consequences of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic still persist. Only 56% of children were literate at the appropriate age in December 2023, according to data released by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in 2024.

Data from the 2021 SAEB, conducted during the aforementioned pandemic and released in September 2022, confirm this impact: "Only 31% of high school students in public schools demonstrated adequate Portuguese language proficiency and 5% demonstrated adequate mathematics proficiency. Unfortunately, the performance was no better than in previous years. The vast majority of children finish fifth grade unable to read simple sentences, unable to recognize distinct opinions on the same subject, unable to convert more than a full hour into minutes, or unable to recognize that a number remains unchanged when multiplied by 1."

The sociologist states that data from the SAEB and Brazil's results in international assessments show that even before the pandemic most Brazilian schools were unable to offer the necessary learning for students to reach adequate proficiency levels.

For her, any future agenda for basic education must begin with a clear diagnosis to propose policies to overcome inequalities and improve learning. Brazil is competent to carry out this diagnosis, she states, as it "has numerous research centers and high-level experts in the area of ​​assessment and curriculum who produce studies and scientific evidence to improve large-scale assessment systems in the country."

Inequality between Schools

Several of the articles in Estudos Avançados #115 present examples of the expertise of Brazilian scholars in providing diagnostics in the area of ​​learning assessment. This is the case of the collaboration between the Sérgio Henrique Ferreira Chair, also based at the IEA-RP, and the municipal administrations of Cubatão and Taquaritinga, two cities in the state of São Paulo. Chair holder Mozart Neves Ramos and his team have analyzed the performance inequality of municipal schools in both locations before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis has considered five educational indicators for elementary school students in 2019: adequate learning in Portuguese and mathematics, school performance (pass rate), student performance on standardized assessments, and age-to-grade distortion. Only the last indicator is not one of the components considered in calculating the Brazilian Basic Education Development Index (IDEB).

The authors explain that the percentage of students with adequate learning corresponds to the proportion of students who have achieved academic proficiency above a certain number of points on the SAEB scale when compared to the total number of students assessed. This represents achieving a performance equal to or higher than 200 points in Portuguese and 225 points in mathematics for the fifth grade of elementary school. The standardized score, in turn, corresponds to the average score obtained by students on the SAEB's Portuguese and mathematics exams. School flow is the average pass rate of students at each stage of schooling, calculated by dividing the total number of students who have been approved by the total number of students enrolled in each grade. The age-to-grade distortion rate is defined as the proportion of students who have accumulated two or more years of academic delay, in line with data from the Brazilian School Census for a given year.

According to the researchers, the work shows that the use of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) integrated into the construction of school georeferencing maps can be useful for managers and staff in understanding existing inequalities in school performance.

The analysis has revealed that the percentage of students with adequate Portuguese and mathematics proficiency are the most important factors explaining the variance in the data collected. The study recommends the adoption of specific measures to mitigate educational inequalities, including interventions to reinforce Portuguese and mathematics proficiency and targeted actions to support municipalities with high age-to-grade distortion rates.

Ramos and his team, however, recognize that the study has limitations, as the PCA is an exploratory technique and does not establish causal relationships between the analyzed variables, in addition to not fully portraying the range of factors that influence academic performance.

Reformulation

The need to reformulate the SAEB, advocated by Guimarães de Castro in her article, has been analyzed by researchers from the São Paulo School of Economics at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EESP-FGV) and the Brazilian Industrial Social Services (SESI). The group conducted a systematic review of documents, interviews with experts, and an analysis of academic presentations. The study has identified the main consensuses and divergences regarding the objectives, format, structure, and governance of the new SAEB. The results indicate broad agreement on the need to update the assessment matrices to align them with the BNCC, but reveal disagreements regarding the scope of this update and the methods for implementing it. The authors state that, despite the extensive debate, there is a lack of practical actions and convergence between the different visions for the effective reformulation of the SAEB.

However, this alignment of assessment matrices with the BNCC must consider changes to the Brazilian Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB), which guides the BNCC. Eduardo Deschamps, from the Regional University of Blumenau (FURB), explains that the 2017 high school assessments presented a worrying scenario in terms of learning in addition to a high dropout rate. These results have been attributed to problems in the curricula, which were aimed at preparing students for higher education even though 80% of students did not pursue this path. Given this situation, he states, Law No. 13.415/2017 inserted competency development, interdisciplinarity, curricular flexibility, greater coordination with vocational education, and full-time training into the curricula. Nonetheless, before the reforms were completed, the Ministry of Education proposed changes that resulted in Law No. 14.495/2024, Deschamps emphasizes. In the article, he discusses both the principles of the 2017 law and the impacts of the 2024 law on the way secondary education is offered in Brazil.

The set of articles also presents a pointed critique of the BNCC regarding the limited space given to literature, using the concept of "non-place" as a reference. The authors, who are members of institutions in the state of Tocantins, describe an environment where utilitarianism and transience prevail, existing as a physical structure but lacking identity construction or relational and/or historical value. For them, by confining literature to the "literary non-place," making "empty, controversial, and sometimes impractical recommendations for the artistic-literary field," the BNCC acts to deplete access to literature in the educational sphere and "contributes to covertly directing it toward market utility and other neoliberal ideals."

It is also important to consider the importance of expanding the focus of educational assessments beyond academic performance, incorporating other aspects of the students' comprehensive development, as advocated in an article by researchers from several universities and the Ayrton Senna Institute. They clarify that this is a guideline of the BNCC in accordance with the LDB. Contributing to this process, the authors propose an assessment protocol for the ten general competencies listed in the BNCC, intended for application in empirical research and educational diagnostics.

While improving assessments aims to provide substantive support for actions that promote improved learning levels in elementary schools, it is crucial to address current problems. Researchers from the Center for Public Policy and Education Assessment Foundation (CAEd), a support institution for the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), have contributed to the journal with an article on the challenges of implementing learning recovery policies in Brazil in the post-pandemic context, focusing on student regrouping and formative assessment.

The discussion draws on the concept of learning reorganization and 2022-2023 research data from the CAEd and IMAGO Global Grassroots in partnership with the municipal education system of Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, to address the strategy of regrouping students based on learning levels. Case studies from schools in different regions of Brazil have also been considered. The researchers believe that the regrouping should take the specificities and contexts of education systems and their schools into account. At the same time, they consider formative assessment to be an indispensable tool for any action aimed at overcoming learning gaps.

Early Childhood Education

The latest issue of Estudos Avançados focuses on more than just elementary and secondary education. Two articles specifically center on early childhood education (ages 0 to 3). Two researchers from USP's Laboratory of Studies and Research in Education and Social Economy (LEPES) have addressed the challenges of this educational stage in Brazil and the importance of national quality standards. In October 2024, the National Board of Education (CNE) and the Basic Education Chamber (CEB) issued a resolution establishing the National Operational Guidelines for Quality and Equity for Early Childhood Education in Brazil. However, according to the authors, challenges remain to be overcome, such as the quality of early childhood education, the low political priority given to daycare, the impact of partnerships on service quality, and the need for intersectoral coordination to ensure comprehensive early childhood care.

Another study, authored by researchers at Fucape Business School, emphasizes that promoting equitable access to early childhood education is an effective public management strategy that requires priority on government agendas to achieve educational goals. The conclusion stems from an analysis that has found a positive correlation between enrollment in early childhood education and student performance at the end of the fifth grade considering data from the 2019 SAEB.

Diversity and Inclusion

Other topics covered in the publication are not directly linked to assessments and curricula but are fundamental to the full educational support of children and adolescents. These include accessibility and inclusion for students with disabilities, and the recognition and appreciation of ethnic and racial diversity.

According to Ivan Cláudio Pereira Siqueira, from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), for accessibility and inclusion to be effective, people with disabilities need to be served by appropriately trained professionals, as inclusive education poses specific challenges for personalized learning. He states that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools promise to facilitate productivity, which is feasible in administrative tasks and in the production of teaching resources, but learning objectives have not yet been demonstrated in studies correlating the use of GenAI and the achievement of educational goals. This is despite the fact that available technology already allows for the development of applications for specific audiences, the challenge being the availability of data for this audience, says Siqueira. Still, he sees GenAI as a window of opportunity for personalized learning.

Researchers from the DACOR Institute, an NGO dedicated to combating racism through data systematization and knowledge dissemination, present historical insights to understand the impact of colonialism and slavery on the social constructions of Black students today. They also discuss the importance of public policies on ethnic-racial relations that allow schools to recognize and value diversity, contributing to the formation and development of a well-rounded individual.

Violence

Attention must also be paid to the impacts of harmful social factors, which manifest themselves within schools and their environment. The increase in violence and other problems affecting student coexistence is one such issue. Researchers from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the São Paulo State University (UNESP) have addressed this topic. The discussion focuses on the final grades of elementary and high school, and explores the specificities and incidence of these problems. The paper also discusses the lessons learned from research conducted by the Study and Research Group on Moral Education (GEPEM), a partnership between UNICAMP and UNESP aimed at addressing and preventing violence, and contributing to improving coexistence in schools. The essay intends to inform those responsible for programs and interventions, as well as those developing assessments and studies on the topic.

Territorial violence and its effects on student life in the city of Rio de Janeiro and a municipality in the province of Buenos Aires are the subject of two articles. A group of researchers, primarily from institutions in the state of Rio de Janeiro, have investigated the effects of territorial control by drug trafficking factions and militias on learning in the examined urban center. The authors point out that there is evidence that crime and violence undermine educational opportunities and outcomes, but the impacts of organized crime are still poorly understood. In the other article, four researchers from Argentine universities have analyzed how the web of violence affects the daily lives of low-income youth who participate in youth centers in the country's capital. They state that "to understand the complex, heterogeneous, and ambiguous nature of violence, it is necessary to offer a more measured perspective that focuses on the smaller, everyday aspects of the games that create precariousness."

Immigrants

In the field of intercultural studies, four articles analyze the schooling processes and performance of immigrant students or students of immigrant descent in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal. Lineu Norio Kohatsu, a professor at USP's Institute of Psychology (IP) and a participant in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2020, authors a paper on the academic performance of immigrant students in public schools in São Paulo. The study has indicated that immigrants have higher grade point averages and lower failure rates.

The schooling processes in the context of immigration have been characterized by two anthropologists from the University of Buenos Aires based on surveys in a locality of the capital including the engagement of a high number of Bolivians, trips to the places of origin of this population, and the collaborative experience of a radio station. The researchers have observed the strength of the allusions to community life in the places of origin and how it continues to be a parameter for life and schooling in the new place of residence.

In the case of the Spanish context, researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have collected the life stories of 50 mothers of Moroccan origin over a period of five years. The data have allowed for the identification of the strategies developed in the processes of social integration, as well as the ways of supporting the children's schooling.

A study on the performance of immigrant students in Portugal has covered both basic and higher education. Affiliated with universities in the same country, the authors advocate for the adoption of measures related to the reception and integration of immigrants and their descendants in the educational sphere, the development of intercultural education in schools, the fight against academic failure and school dropout as well as against ethnic/cultural, religious, and gender discrimination, and the strengthening of teacher training.

This issue of the journal also includes an article that addresses literacy in the Portuguese language, presenting the history of the teaching method for children and adults created by António Feliciano de Castilho in 1849 on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores, and later disseminated and implemented in other parts of Portuguese territory. Another work, this one of philosophical nature, discusses the thought of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) on educational matters. The reference is Ricoeur's article La Parole est Mon Royaume ("The Word is My Kingdom"), published in 1955. According to the authors, he considered the word shared between generations as the core of teaching.

Reviews

Historian Tania Regina de Luca, a full professor at UNESP, has written about the book Primeiro Leitor – Ensaio de Memória ("The First Reader – An Essay on Memory"), by editor Luiz Schwarcz. At the beginning of the review, de Luca states that the book analyzes issues related to the social figure, role, and actions of a publisher. Half of the chapters are dedicated to the publishing world and its characters, and the other half address deceased writers who have been important to Schwarcz and to the publishing house he founded in 1986, Companhia das Letras.

Authored by writer and journalist Hugo Almeida, the other review is about the book E Viva a Vida! – Correspondência entre os Escritores Osman Lins e Hermilo Borba Filho ("And Long Live Life! – Correspondence between Writers Osman Lins and Hermilo Borba Filho"), published by Hucitec in 2024. The work features a faithful and annotated text edition, documentary research, and an introduction by Nelson Luís Barbosa, who carried out the work during his postdoctoral research at USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB). The book brings together, analyzes, and contextualizes 201 letters, including notes and telegrams, exchanged by the two authors from the state of Pernambuco from 1965 to 1976.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Basic Education

Artificial Intelligence and Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Basic Education - Ivan Cláudio Pereira Siqueira
The Trajectory of Blacks in Basic Education: Adversities and Coping Proposals - Alexandre Dantas et al.
Regrouping Students to Recompose Learning: Brazilian Experiences - Lina Kátia Mesquita de Oliveira et al.
An Analysis of Academic Performance in the City Schools of Cubatão (SP) and Taquaritinga (SP) - Mozart Neves Ramos et al.
A Proposal for Evaluating BNCC [Common Core] General Competencies in Basic Education  - Ricardo Primi et al.
Socializing and Working Together in Schools: Challenges and Possibilities - Telma P. Vinha et al.
Proposals for the new Basic Education Evaluation System (SAEB): The Current Debate - Priscilla Tavares and Mariah Morikawa
Where are High Schools Going? An Analysis of the 2017 and 2024 Legal and Regulatory Frameworks - Eduardo Deschamps
Early Childhood Education: The Discussion of the National Quality and Equity Parameters (PNQEI) Starts in the Cradle - Daniel Domingues dos Santos and Camila Martins de Souza Silva
Reflections on the Future of Educational Assessment in Brazil- Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro
The Effect of Attending Early Childhood Education on Students' Academic Performance in Brazil - Hellen Cristina Araujo Penha et al.
A Literary Non-Place: The Provisional Space of Literature in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) - Antonio Ismael Lopes de Souza et al.
"Jupiter Vibrating the Ray" in Defense of the Portuguese Method by A.F. de Castilho - Cesar Augusto Castro and Carlota Boto
A Craft Governed by Words: Paul Ricoeur, Education, and Language - Denizart Busto de Fazio et al.

Immigration, Education, and Violence

Immigrant Students in Public High Schools: Academic Performance in Question  - Lineu N. Kohatsu
Schools in Bolivia and Argentina: Contributions from an Ethnographic Research, Two Trips and a Collaborative Experience - Gabriela Novaro and María Laura Diez
Invisible Educational Oversight: The Presence of Moroccan Mothers at a School in Catalonia (Spain) - Fatiha El Mouali et al.
Viewpoints and Perspectives on Education and Immigration in Portugal: From Basic to Higher Education - Maria da Conceição Pereira Ramos and Natália Ramos
State Violence and Schemes: The Daily Life of Children and Young People in Lower-Income Neighborhoods - Valeria Llobet et al.
Education under Siege: Impacts of Territorial Control by Militias and Drug-Trafficking Gangs on Academic Performance - Rogério Jerônimo Barbosa et al.

Reviews

On the Art of Editing - Tania Regina de Lucca
"And Long Live Life!": The Dialectic of Letters - Hugo Almeida

Photos by Elza Fiuza/Agência Brasil. Public domain.

Climate Negotiations

Goldemberg states that emissions increased globally by 33% between 1992 and 2022, with a 78% increase from developing countries (including China), which in 1991 were already responsible for more than 50% of the emissions. "Therefore, it is clear that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established at the 1992 Earth Summit, and the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, did not achieve the expected success," says the physicist.

He traces the climate negotiations back to a decision made at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen for developed countries to allocate US$ 100 billion annually until 2020 to meet the needs of developing countries. "Bitter discussions on this topic took place over the years and it was decided that COP29 (Baku, 2024) would be dedicated to finance and review the 2009 decision under the Paris Agreement of 2015."

The physicist highlights that at the closing session of COP29, faced with the imminent risk of failure, the president of the Conference presented a final decision "without consulting the plenary": to adopt the anual target of at least US$ 300 billion in climate finance from various public and private, bilateral, and multilateral sources, including alternative ones, until 2035. Goldemberg explains that this happened despite the fact that UNFCCC's Standing Committee on Finance estimates that US$ 5 to US$ 7 trillion (approximately US$ 455-485 billion per year) will be needed from 2022 to 2030.

He remembers that several countries questioned the COP29 decision and lamented the lack of a minimum allocation of resources for least developed countries, as well as the absence of guidelines for advancing the energy transition, in addition to arguing that China and Saudi Arabia should also contribute to climate finance.

"What we hope is that COP30, under the Brazilian presidency, will improve this situation." However, Goldemberg considers it unlikely that the anual US$ 300 billion allocated for climate finance until 2035 will increase, since "Trump's election will reduce the United States' participation in the process." Additionally, there is the impact of global inflation on the amount. "What can be improved is trying to increase the share of concessional resources that will come from public resources," he ponders, citing examples such as the Marshall Plan, created in 1948 by the USA for the European reconstruction, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), adopted in 2022, which "can actually be considered a Marshall Plan to help North American industry face the energy transition."

Nonetheless, he states that climate finance from industrialized countries to developing countries is only part of the effort to reduce emissions: "Internal actions taken by governments can play an important role depending on the right public policy choices." Among these actions, Goldemberg mentions taxes on carbon emissions or the regulation of the emissions market by setting a maximum emission level per sector (or enterprise) and the creation of a market for buying and selling carbon credits like the one created by Brazil in 2024.

Emphasis on renewable energy: a more ambitious strategy that developing countries could adopt, according to Goldemberg

A more ambitious strategy for developing countries is trying to guide their growth using more efficient technologies and renewable energy sources, the physicist adds.

In the Brazilian case, he comments that the federal government is, "at least rhetorically", taking this path through the New Growth Acceleration Program (Novo Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento/PAC), which should invest a total amount of R$ 1.7 trillion: R$ 1.3 trillion by the end of 2025 and R$ 400 billion after 2026. "Due to the economic vicissitudes the country is going through and the low investment, the implementation of the Novo PAC is occurring slowly, but still paving the way through indispensable legislative measures to attract 'green' investments."

Goldemberg concludes by saying that holding COP30 in Belém will place a greater emphasis on preserving the Amazon rainforest, even considering that Brazil's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is modest (4.43% in 2022). "The success in reducing deforestation in the Amazon and the adoption of a law creating a carbon market in Brazil, which has only occurred in a few developing countries to date, will enable us to lead the way," he says.

Sustainable Society

Physicist Paulo Artaxo, coordinator of USP's Center for Studies on Sustainability of the Amazon Rainforest, also believes that COP30 will be an opportunity for Brazil to regain global leadership on issues related to climate change. He is the author of the article "COP30 and the Worsening Climate Crisis – Pathways to Build a Sustainable Society."

Some of the strategies he cited for adapting to climate change are: improving water resource management; protecting and restoring ecosystems by conserving natural areas; developing sustainable agricultural systems by developing plant varieties more resistant to extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods; strengthening the health system to address heat-related and vector-borne diseases; disaster resilience planning with contingency plans that include community empowerment and the improvement of infrastructure to protect populations; and implementing educational programs on climate change and sustainability to increase public awareness and engagement.

However, Artaxo warns that the international landscape in which the Conference is taking place is unfavorable to the intensification of global governance. "We need to chart a course for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels, which are the root of the climate problems we face. We also need to structure policies for adapting to the new climate, particularly in the most vulnerable countries. In this task, implementing financing mechanisms is crucial so that less developed countries can implement their energy transition and adapt to the new climate."

According to him, although Brazil accounted for 4.5% of global emissions in 2023, it is not yet among the countries that price greenhouse gas emissions. "This creates difficulties in implementing regulatory policies for the so-called carbon market."

Artaxo emphasizes that the externalities of carbon emissions are not taken into account, adding that zeroing out net emissions (the difference between gross emissions and removals) can boost economies due to the investments needed to enable reductions and damage control. "Obviously, this transition to a low-carbon society must be carried out gradually and in a coordinated manner, also considering the reduction of social inequalities."

Assisted natural regeneration (RNA) project in the region of Cotriguaçu, in the state of Mato Grosso

He lists a series of measures aimed at reducing Brazilian emissions: reducing deforestation and restoring forest areas; increasing the use of renewable energy; promoting sustainable agriculture with the implementation of agroecological practices; and investing in quality public transportation and urban mobility with low greenhouse gas emissions, having an added benefit of reducing urban air pollution, which affects the health of millions of Brazilians.

Risks for the Amazon

"Amazon at Risk and COP30 as a Critical Opportunity to Avoid the Point of No Return" is an article authored by climatologist Carlos Nobre, a visiting professor at the IEA and holder of the Climate & Sustainability Chair (a partnership between the Institute and USP's President's Office), and researchers Julia Arieira and Diego Oliveira Brandão, both members of the Scientific-Technical Secretariat of the Science Panel for the Amazon. For them, the Conference represents a key opportunity to discuss and develop solutions for "preserving the ecological limits that sustain the integrity of the Amazon rainforest and the well-being of its people."

For this to happen, the authors consider it essential that dialogue between governments, civil society, local communities, the private sector, and academia be anchored in both science and local knowledge. Thus, "COP30 will be decisive in building pathways that reconcile sustainable development and a climate justice that recognizes that the impacts of climate change affect different social groups unequally, both in intensity and vulnerability."

The article analyzes the main threats pushing the Amazon towards its critical thresholds, the tipping points, and discusses governance and nature-based strategies that can halt its destruction and boost its regeneration and sustainable use.

Currently, 23% of the Brazilian Amazon is deforested, an area equivalent to 1 million km², according to the study. Although there has been a reduction in deforestation in recent years, forest fires intensified by the historic drought of 2023-2024 have generated an alarming increase in greenhouse gas emissions, as pointed out by the authors.

The Amazon is also suffering from global warming. Some regions have already exceeded the 1.5°C increase limit (compared to the second half of the 19th century) established by the Paris Agreement: "In 2023, record temperature values were recorded in Manaus and Monte Alegre with annual averages of 28.8°C and 27.9°C, respectively, which were surpassed in 2024. Compared to the average for 1990-2010, these values represented an increase of 1.7°C in Manaus and 0.9°C in Monte Alegre in 2023, and an increase of 1.8°C in both Manaus and Monte Alegre in 2024."

Extreme droughts in the region have become more frequent. Previously, they occurred once every 20 years, but this century the recurrence interval was shortened to 5 years. An extreme drought event is a natural phenomenon associated with rising ocean surface temperatures in the North Tropical Atlantic and the Equatorial Pacific, but it has intensified and become more frequent due to human-induced global warming, the researchers comment. The consequence is a drastic reduction in the water levels of many important rivers in the region. The study explains that global warming above 2°C could further intensify the warming of surface waters in both oceans and, consequently, increase the occurrence of droughts in the Amazon.

Floating houses based on the bottom of Lake Aleixo, near Manaus, during the drought of 2023

A synergistic combination of deforestation between 20% and 25%, and global warming of 2°C to 2.5°C could push more than half of the region into a state of irreversible degradation, according to the authors. The interaction between deforestation, forest degradation, fires, and global warming is associated with five potential tipping points: 1) a 2°C increase in average global temperature compared to pre-industrial levels; 2) local annual precipitation below 1,000 mm; 3) accumulated water deficit greater than -400 mm; 4) a dry season lasting more than six months; and 5) a cumulative forest cover loss of 20%. "Some telling evidence of these processes include prolonged dry season, increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit, and increased tree mortality rates."

The article warns that exceeding the point of no return will jeopardize greenhouse gas emissions control, alter rainfall patterns, and reduce agricultural and forestry productivity (both within and outside the Amazon). Other consequences will include the worsening of social inequalities, and losses in biological and cultural diversity, fueling a cycle of environmental degradation and social injustice.

Given these risks, the researchers emphasize that large-scale forest restoration, the implementation of sustainable infrastructure, regenerative livestock and agriculture practices, and bioindustrialization are essential nature-based solutions to keep the Amazon from environmental and social collapse in addition to curbing destruction. They add that the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and other communities of the region in the discussions is crucial to promoting social justice, sharing benefits, and reducing inequalities.

Other articles

The dossier includes five additional articles analyzing the consequences of climate change for Brazil in various areas and presenting proposals for minimizing and/or adapting to them. Some of the authors are pathologist Paulo Saldiva, a full professor at USP's School of Medicine and former director of the IEA; soil specialist Carlos Eduardo Pellegrino Cerri, a professor at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ/USP) and a researcher at the Center for Carbon Research in Tropical Agriculture (CCARBON/USP); and economic and social development specialist Marcel Burztyn, a full professor at the Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília (UnB).

"Municipal Health Systems and Climate Change: Infrastructure and Resilience Challenges in Brazil," which addresses the harmful effects of climate change on human health, proposes a conceptual, operational, and budgetary transformation for building resilient systems in the country, emphasizing the integration between levels of care, the strengthening of regional governance, and the valuing of community social capital.

Crop and livestock farming is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, but it is also one of the most vulnerable activities to climate change. A paper dedicated to the sector's role in addressing climate change presents information on some agricultural management practices considered options for adaption and mitigation of effects.

Socio-environmental protection is also addressed in the dossier. Researchers from UnB have analyzed the evolution of social protection instruments and present a proposal for integrating public policies to combat poverty and sustainable development. In this proposal, the abundant sunlight in Brazil's semiarid region becomes a solution intstead of a problem due to its use in clean energy generation, resulting in an income for vulnerable communities.

Legal aspects related to greenhouse gases are the subject of two further articles. One of them addresses the monitoring of the integrity and safety of CO₂ storage facilities, while the other is a comparative study of the legislative landscape for this area in Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the European Union. A third paper focuses on the creation of a regulated carbon market in Brazil. After analyzing international and national experiences, and legislative initiatives such as bills and the establishment of the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System by Law 15.042/24, the authors conclude that fundamental issues remain to be resolved, including those related to the agricultural sector.

The dossier ends with a review of "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea," a book by David Livingstone published in 2024 by Princeton University Press. Nilson Cortez Crocia de Barros, a tenured professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), comments that given the evidence of the severe effects of climate change, "Livingstone recovers the broad spectrum of considerations regarding the influence of climate on the human species. This spectrum is mapped along four paths: the medical path, the path of soul-searching, the economic path, and, finally, the military path."

Related themes

An interview with filmmaker Cacá Diegues (1940-2025) in 2021 is one of the highlights of issue #114

In addition to the opening dossier, issue #114 contains a second set of texts entitled "Society and the Environment." Although it covers a variety of topics, the section is equally connected to those to be discussed at COP30, according to the journal's editor, Sérgio Adorno. The themes range from natural resources (forests, water, and natural gas) to land issues. The proposal for citizen science and the concept of urban commons are also addressed.

The third section of the issue is dedicated to arts and culture. The operetta "Abel, Helena," by Artur Azevedo, the religious influence on artistic production, and the promotion of culture and the arts in Brazil are some of the covered subjects. There is also an interview with filmmaker Cacá Diegues, who died last February at the age of 84. Conducted in 2021 by Noel dos Santos Carvalho, a professor of Brazilian Cinema at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), it focuses on public policy, the film market, and attempts to institutionalize film production in the country.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

COP30 Challenges

Expectations for COP30 in Belém - José Goldemberg
COP30 and the Worsening Climate Crisis – Pathways to Build a Sustainable Society - Paulo Artaxo
Amazon at Risk and COP30 as a Critical Opportunity to Avoid the Point of No Return - Carlos Afonso Nobre et al.
Municipal Health Systems and Climate Change: Infrastructure and Resilience Challenges in Brazil - Flavio Pinheiro Martins et al.
Crop and Livestock Farming as Part of the Solution to Tackle Global Climate Change - Carlos Eduardo Pellegrino Cerri et al.
From Social to Socio-Environmental Protection in Times of Climate Change: A Retrospective and a Proposal - Marcel Bursztyn et al.
Legal Comparative Analysis of CO₂ Storage Monitoring in Selected Countries - Thaiz da Silva Vescovi Chedid et al.
The Regulated Carbon Market in Brazil - Adriana Carvalho Pinto Vieira et al.
The Climate Change Apocalypse and the Echoes of the Classical Geographic Mindset - Nilson Cortez Crocia de Barros

Society and the Environment

Ecological-Economic Zoning: Overview and Interface with Planning and Public Policies - Marcia Renata Itani et al.
The Challenge of the Water/City Dyad in the Management of Urban Aquifers - Filipe da Silva Peixoto and Itabaraci Nazareno Cavalcante
A Genealogy of Urban Common Good - Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti and Leandro Silva Medrano
Private Management of Public Forests in Brazil: Analysis of Concession Contracts - Victor Pegoraro et al.
The Brazilian Academic Milieu and the Application of Citizen Science to Ecological Research - Eduardo Roberto Alexandrino et al.
Santa Catarina’s Natural Gas Adhesion to Ascher’s Neo-Urbanism - Leonardo Mosimann Estrella et al.
From Royal Land Grants to Latifundia: Reconstituting the Chain of Ownership in a Rural Settlement in Goiás - Graciella Corcioli et al.
Land Ownership Regularization in the Context of Agrarian Reform: The Case of the Santa Monica Rural Settlement in Terenos, MS - Luciane Cleonice Durante et al.
Unfinished Discussions: Disaster and Complex Systems - Leandro Roberto Neves

Arts and Culture

Artur Azevedo and the Operetta: "Abel, Helena" - João Roberto Faria
Film Production, Cinema Novo, and Brazilian Modernity – Interview with Filmmaker Cacá Diegues - Noel dos Santos Carvalho
In the Colors of Creation: Living Religion and Regional Culture in Antônio Poteiro - José Reinaldo F. Martins Filho
Towards a Policy of Encounters: Reflections on the Advancement of Culture and Arts in Brazil - Sharine Machado Cabral Melo

Photos (from the top): Science in HD/Unsplash; HD Mídia/WRI Brasil; Alberto César/Amazônia Real; and personal archive of Cacá Diegues

Issue #113 of the journal Estudos Avançados, corresponding to the first four months of 2025, focuses on the setbacks and disruptions that democracy has faced both in Brazil and in other countries. It consists of three dossiers: "Democracy," "Denialism and Authoritarianism," and "Disinformation and Democracy," which total 19 articles written by 34 researchers from several Brazilian universities.

The publication's editor, sociologist Sérgio Adorno, points out the convergence of the three sets of texts and highlights that the first of them, "Democracy," explores the current dilemmas of this government regime, "many of which are manifested in the decline in levels of trust in political institutions and the emergence of populist political projects."

The topic is discussed in the opening article of the dossier, "Does Democracy Have a Future?," by Elisa Reis, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She argues that, although its intrinsically expansive nature does not guarantee the survival of democracy by itself, it can provide the basis for the development of political strategies that, by combining human and technological resources, manage to "foster innovative ways to promote justice, inclusion, and participation, the elements that give life to democratic coexistence".

The debate on the principle of equality, one of the pillars of democracy, is essential in an era in which "social inequalities of all kinds are deepening," as the editor points out. The issue is addressed in an article by José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes, from USP's Law School, based on the concept of equality as belonging defended by Aristotle. For the professor, democratic and republican legitimacy depends on the idea of ​​general justice in which equality means belonging and indifference to it constitutes fertile ground for distrust and authoritarian solutions.

The Brazilian case

Bringing the discussion about democracy to the Brazilian situation, political scientist Bruno Reis, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), analyzes the political crisis experienced by the country from 2013 to 2022. His work seeks a synthesis of the components present in the period, examining topics such as institutional dynamics and their conditions of stability, dysfunctionalities in the regulation of electoral campaign financing, the drift towards a government hostile to the constitutional order, the interaction of the Brazilian crisis with the international framework of democratic erosion, and the prospects for overcoming the "destructive drift."

The crisis of Brazilian democracy is also discussed in a study by seven researchers from USP, the São Paulo State University (UNESP), the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), and the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). The work reflects on the legal and institutional dimension of this crisis and its specificities in the global context. The authors state that "it is necessary to consider the problem of democracy from a legal and institutional perspective in a systematic way and in all its complexity, and not in a manner restricted to the themes usually explored: the party-electoral and government systems, and the role of the Judiciary."

Intelligences

The dossier also addresses changes that impact the dynamics of democratic regimes today, such as the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). Researchers from UFMG and the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) point out that the coexistence of individual, collective, and artificial intelligences poses new challenges for democratic theory in the context of human-machine interaction.

They state that there is no a priori determination about how humans will reconstruct their forms of learning in the layers of individual and collective intelligences when feeding on feedback produced in the AI ​​layer: "The challenges are enormous and human centrality is central to the future of democracy."

Reproduction of O Mais Importante É Inventar o Brasil que Nós Queremos (2021), by Elian Almeida, image that illustrates issue #113

Claims

Another topic addressed by the dossier is the unfulfilled promises of liberal-democratic traditions regarding feminist and anti-racist demands. The article by Luciana Tatagiba, from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and Flávia Biroli, from the Univeristy of Brasília (UnB), provides an interpretation of what is at stake in the normality and in the crisis of democracies based on interviews conducted with Brazilian feminist and anti-racist leaders in 2023.

The dossier concludes with a case study by Jefferson Nascimento, a doctoral student at the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). He analyzes the process of militarization and dedemocratization in Venezuela during the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Nascimento comments that during Chávez's term the military received incentives to participate in politics at institutional levels. The relationship with the government deepened under Maduro's administration, ensuring their survival in power amid the economic crisis and attacks by opponents, but contributing to the erosion of the country's democratic system.

The decline of the democratic system in various parts of the world is accentuated directly or indirectly by several factors. One of them is denialism, the belief in a supposed loss of legitimacy of science from different perspectives.

Denialism

The second dossier in issue #113, "Denialism and Authoritarianism," discusses the topic from different perspectives. Among them, the journal’s editor cites the absence of a denialist movement in Brazil on the scale of those occurring in other countries, the predominance of denialist attacks on public policy issues (vaccines, universities, and social policies), the assumption of epistemic denialism, and clashes between epistemic authority and the uses of science based on the debates that took place in the COVID-19 Parliamentary Investigation Commission.

Adorno adds that denialism "is equally present, active, and strong in the public and political sphere, especially in this era of polarization and right-wing extremism." This is revealed in the articles that address anti-intellectualism, the cultivation of masculinity, and the elimination of gender perspectives in the policies of the Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights during the Bolsonaro government. The closing of the set of texts is a review of the book Dicionário de Negacionismos no Brasil ("Dictionary of Negacionisms in Brazil"), organized by José Szwako and José Luiz Ratton.

Disinformation

But denialism is not an isolated phenomenon that erodes the credibility of information available to the public, a fundamental resource for the full exercise of citizenship in a democratic society. In this context of deteriorating public debate, the dossier "Disinformation and Democracy" completes the analysis of the complex contemporary situation with articles written by members and guests of IEA's research group on Journalism, Law, and Freedom.

The articles discuss topics such as the need to deepen the concept of disinformation, the trends in transnational journalism with its data validation processes by information agencies, the risks to journalism and democracy represented by digital platforms, the curtailment of freedom of the press and expression promoted and encouraged by the federal government, especially under the Bolsonaro administration, and the role of social media in disrupting democracy.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Democracy

Does Democracy Have a Future? - Elisa Reis
Equality and Justice Today, on the Steps of Aristotle - José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes
Institutional Dynamics and International Ballast: Toward a Diagnosis of the Brazilian Political Crisis (2013-2022) - Bruno Pinheiro Wanderley Reis
Crisis of Brazilian Democracy and Legal-Institutional Arrangements - Murilo Gaspardo, Maria Paula Dallari Bucci, Vanessa Corsetti Gonçalves Teixeira, Carolina Gabas Stuchi, José Duarte Neto, Rubens Beçak, and Daniel Campos de Carvalho
Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: Humans, Machines, and Algorithmic Institutions - Fernando Filgueiras, Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça, and Virgílio Almeida
Feminist Critiques of Democracy in Brazil: Analysis of the Crisis and the Limits of Normality - Luciana Tatagiba and Flávia Biroli
Militarization and De-Democratization During the Chavista Governments in Venezuela - Jefferson Nascimento

Denialism and Authoritarianism

The Meanings of the Crisis or Reflective Manifesto on Denialism and Science - José Szwako
Epistemic Denialism - Renan Springer de Freitas
The Public Life of Scientific Facts: Science and Politics at the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the Pandemic in Brazil - Daniel Edler Duarte, Pedro Benetti, and Marcos César Alvarez
"Good War, Boy(s)!": Bolsonarism, "Anti-Intellectualism," and Masculinity - Maria Caramez Carlotto
"Woman" and "Family": Conventional Wisdom as Public Policy in the Bolsonaro Government - Marília Moschkovich
The Past, Intermittency, and Future of an Illusion - Daniel Afonso da Silva
From A to Z: a Guide to Understanding Denialism - Guilherme Queiroz Alves

Disinformation and Democracy

Disinformation, Democracy, and Regulation - Vitor Blotta and Eugênio Bucci
From Transnational Journalism to Blockchain Experiments in the Struggle Against Disinformation - Ben Hur Damenek and Magaly Prado
Threats to Journalism from Digital Platforms: Contributions to Regulation - Rogério Christofoletti
Shut up, Journalist: Intimidation and Disinformation as State Policies - Camilo Vannuchi, João Gabriel de Lima and Taís Gasparian
Social Media and Disruptions of Democracy - Clifford Griffin and Vitor Blottar

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

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

The Biota Synthesis program seeks a new highly qualified postdoctoral fellow to be part of a "Center of Analysis and Synthesis of Nature-based Solutions".

The main role of this position will be to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of knowledge and public policy co-production within the project, as well as to develop and assess indicators of societal impact.

The ideal candidate should be skilled in collaborative teamwork, and have strong abilities in active listening and engaging in dialogue with researchers and social actors from diverse backgrounds and professional experiences. Additionally, he/she should possess expertise in modeling and analytical methods (good knowledge in R, github, and multivariate statistical analyses) to work with impact indicators, including those provided by Altmetrics, Overton, and PlumX.

Although the postdoctoral position is open to Brazilian and foreign researchers who have a PhD degree, fluency in Portuguese is desired to facilitate the discussion and dialogue with the different actors involved in the project.

Fellowships offered by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) are competitive (R$ 12,000 - approximately US$ 2,000.00 per month) and granted for 24 months. They include a research contingency fund equivalent to 10% of its annual value, which should be spent on items directly related to the research activity.

Full information here.

A year after the launch of "Advanced in What? The Pioneering Trajectory of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo," the publication is now available in English. The version of the book, authored by former Director Guilherme Ary Plonski and historian Roney Cytrynowicz, was presented to the public during the directors' conference of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) network, hosted by the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) in Ghana, from November 4 to 6. The content can be accessed on the USP Open Books Portal.

"Making the account of IEA’s journey in the contemporary lingua franca intertwines two closely related historical milestones: the almost four decades since the creation of our Institute and the 15 years since the establishment of the global network. It also substantially contributes to the process of prospective reflection within the community of IASs, as agreed upon in Accra," said Plonski after having joined the interinstitutional meeting.

Words by him make up the introductory note to the volume, as do those of Professor Roseli de Deus Lopes. Together, they directed the IEA from April 2020 to April 2024. Both recall that the President of USP at the time of the Institute's creation, Professor José Goldemberg, to whom the book is dedicated, had firsthand knowledge of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in the USA, and "understood that it was the strategic model to revitalize the University after the dramatic period experienced under an authoritarian regime," referring to the military dictatorship in Brazil. According to them, this is the reason why Goldemberg assigned the IEA the mission of "fostering new ideas resulting from the coexistence, confrontation, and interaction between the various areas of intellectual work," as described by its founder 39 years ago.

The book delves into the cultural context that has led to the creation of the IEA and presents its trajectory based on research and interviews conducted by Cytrynowics, a work made possible by partners Itaú Foundation and the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), as pointed out by Plonski and Lopes. For them, the Institute owes the reported advances largely "to the fact that it is integrated into the vibrant community of USP," which is why the launch of the original Portuguese version has been included in the celebrations of the University's 90th anniversary.

The current President of USP, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Júnior, has been one of the people to write for the book's introduction, in which he highlights the role played by the Institute throughout its history in promoting the academic excellence of the University, "incessantly seeking to extend the boundaries of knowledge in various areas of learning." In addition to emphasizing IEA's focus on interdisciplinarity and intellectual collaboration, Carlotti Júnior has noted that several of the Institute's works have informed public policies in areas essential to Brazil, such as education and health.

The President has highlighted that even without having its own faculty and student body, the IEA manages to bring together professors and students from 80% of USP's teaching units, museums, and specialized institutes in its research teams in addition to contributing to academic exchange with other Brazilian and foreign institutions. Furthermore, he has praised the fact that the IEA is a founding member (2010) and integrated the coordination (2019-2021) of UBIAS, which brings together 47 IASs linked to universities on the five continents, something that "has enhanced the international projection of USP."

The Vice-President of USP, Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda, has contributed to the publication by addressing the context of the Brazilian redemocratization in which the IEA was created: "It has been envisioned as a place where researchers, scientists, intellectuals, artists, journalists, and public figures could coexist and design a renewed University in line with the new times." She has stated that the IEA collaborated in the democratic construction of the country, "insofar as it reflected on our issues, gave voice to those who opposed obscurantism, and, in short, embraced the enlightened role of a contemporary University of its time."

"This enlightened spirit that was at the origin of the IEA has not been lost, as can be seen in the Institute's actions, aimed at welcoming and reflecting on the new directions of an inclusive, differentiated, and socially democratic University while not abandoning the advanced agenda of knowledge and science," wrote Arruda.

Support

Representatives of the partners, who provided financial support for the production and publication of the book, have also enriched the material. Eduardo Saron, President of the Itaú Foundation, has stated that the partnership with USP was born through the IEA and from the "mutual desire to develop strategic, lasting, and impactful initiatives." The objective has always been "to contribute to emancipatory public policies that facilitate structural changes in education and culture."

Saron has mentioned the two initiatives that received the most attention from the partnership. The Alfredo Bosi Chair of Basic Education, inaugurated in 2019 to study innovative practices and training programs that promote significant advances in proposals for basic education, got support during its first five years. The Olavo Setubal Chair – Transversalities: Art, Culture, Science, and Education, in turn, has been fostered since its implementation in 2016 to enable the construction of a "vast legacy based on studies that encompass cultural management, the role of culture in society, and transversal discussions on art and science."

The executive secretary of CGI.br, Hartmut Richard Glaser, has said that the Oscar Sala Chair, a result of the partnership between the Committee and the IEA, enables multidisciplinary exchange between knowledge from diverse areas. In the first semester of 2025 it offered the postgraduate course "Economics, Culture and Power on the Internet" in the pursuit of strengthening and cultivating expertise about the internet, its impact, functioning, applications, and tools. "In this way, USP and CGI.br expand the horizon of digital technologies that favor technological advancement, innovation, and the fundamental right of access to information and communication."

The studies and essays in the dossier "Amazonia Against the Anthropocene" in issue #112 of the journal Estudos Avançados "highlight the complexity of the relationships between nature and culture, and the voices of those often silenced in colonial and official narratives," according to the publication's editor, sociologist Sérgio Adorno, a member of IEA's Board. The articles are available for free download from Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

"Recurrent scenarios of territorial plundering of indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and traditional peoples and communities have stimulated the search for a common political identity and the implementation of actions aimed at environmental conservation and the defense of collective territorial rights, which leads to the formulation of an archaeology of resistance in the Anthropocene," he states.

Coexistence

With ten papers authored by researchers from Brazilian and foreign universities and institutes, most of them from institutions in the states of Pará and Amazonas, the dossier begins with the article "Amazonia in Symbiosis: Traces of Humankinds Facing the Anthropocene," by an anthropologist and three archaeologists from the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA). They propose a critical discussion on some definitions of the Anthropocene. According to them, the indigenous marks in the Amazon rainforest are the result of forms of coexistence between humans and the landscape that contrast with the new marks of the Anthropocene.

"If the villages, terreiros, paths, farms, and other places promoted by the Amazonian peoples project connections between species, human collectives, political forms, languages, technologies, and worldviews in flows of constant interaction, Western initiatives develop disconnections between people, territories, and cultures, and interrupt multiple interspecies flows."

However, they emphasize that the criteria for identifying the Anthropocene are being constructed based on exceptionalist and universalist parameters, while "the 'forest-land' does not emerge as a passive place" where the impacts of the new geological epoch occur. "By making their differences in the ways of inhabiting the land count, humans and more-than-humans in the Amazon face the Anthropocene."

This thesis is reinforced in the following text, "An Archaeology of Forest Peoples," by two other researchers from UFOPA. For them, the Anthropocene, understood from the perspective of mercantilism and colonialism or the emergence of industrial capitalism, has been made possible by the "spoliation of traditionally occupied territories transformed into places for the extraction of raw materials and labor. Therefore, the countercolonial resistance of the forest peoples through the defense of their territories and ways of life are examples of an 'Amazon against the Anthropocene.'"

The authors state that archaeology, by providing historical understanding from material remains, "presents itself as a powerful tool for telling the history of these peoples, which has always been written from documents produced by outsiders." In the article they seek to demonstrate that the Amazon is a web of socio-ecological interactions as a result of the domestication of landscapes and populations of species.

Landscapes

The domestication of landscapes is the subject of an article by researchers from the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), the Juruá Institute, and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). They comment that the Amazon is a natural biome in the popular imagination, which "denies the existence and agency of indigenous peoples, who arrived at least 13,000 years ago." This myth of the virgin forests ends up having repercussions on public policies for conservation and regional development, they note.

The researchers explain that indigenous peoples combine horticulture and domestication of landscapes, as well as sedentarism and mobility. According to them, it is widely accepted that the most intensely domesticated landscapes are more common where indigenous populations were largest. Along rivers, for example.

Regarding the debate about domestication in areas between rivers, they state that the objection to this having occurred is due to the lack of evidence in these regions. Studies are mainly carried out in areas close to large rivers due to their ease of access. The assumption that highly mobile peoples have not domesticated landscapes intensively is a thesis that has proven to be erroneous, according to the article.

Food production

The dossier also addresses specific aspects of indigenous cultures, such as food production techniques. The topic is addressed in an article by anthropologists from the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) and the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Built over time and connected to cosmological formulations, the wealth of food preparation and consumption techniques “was and is used in the transformation of plants in a broad sense, cultivated or not, domesticated or wild, from agriculture or foraging, native or exotic, from the countryside, the forest, or the scrubland,” they say.

The study considers three plant species (açaí, mairá potato, and umari), observing the ways of obtaining fundamental ingredients (gum and paste) or altering the state of the plant matter (smoking, fermentation). Understood "as cosmotechnics, the ways of transforming plants are a clear example of anti-anthropocene practices, since their orientation is based on an indigenous equistatutory episteme between species and other subjects inhabiting the Earth."

Countercolonial autonomy in the face of the capitalocene. This is how two researchers, one from the University of Brasília (UnB) and the other from Lancaster University, define the indigenous movement in the Lower Tapajós River in their article. According to them, this countercolonial autonomy is manifested in the cultivation of cassava, worldview, and political self-organization. The focus of the text is on the Tupinambá people. To address the problem of conflicts between indigenous and non-indigenous people, the researchers propose four possibilities: a new universal approach to recognition; the idea of ​​insurgent universality; the idea of ​​traditionally occupied lands; and territories of common use.

Archaeologists from USP, UFOPA, the Max Planck Institute, and the University of Exeter present research findings based on data from four regions of the Amazon: 1) the geoglyphs of the state of Acre, in Brazil; 2) the raised fields of French Guiana; 3) the Amazonian dark earth of the Lower Tapajós River; and 4) the zanja sites (sets of ditches) in Iténez, Bolivia. The study has sought to answer several outstanding questions about the nature of the Anthropocene, including the role of deforestation in indigenous practices in the past, the extent to which black earths have been produced for cultivation, and the extent to which the Amazon rainforest has recovered after the demographic collapse.

According to the authors, the period that began 4,500 years ago "marked one of the largest-scale environmental transformations, with an abrupt increase starting 2,000 years ago." For them, considering this second period as the beginning of an Amazonian Anthropocene "is a topic open to debate." However, they state that paleoecological data suggest that such transformations, instead of causing negative ruptures in existing ecosystems, have managed to maintain vital ecosystem services by maintaining vegetation cover with the construction of new relationships between people and other beings in the forest. However, they point out that the most intense and destructive anthropogenic impacts occurred in several regions of the Amazon after the European invasion, especially during the 20th century.

Cosmological Aspects

Two social scientists from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) are the authors of a paper on issues related to the Anthropocene based on indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, which according to them "disarrange non-indigenous understandings about humanity, nature, supernature, and consequently about life, death, and extinction."

From an ethnographic perspective, the article focuses on indigenous ways of thinking, inhabiting, and transforming the relationship between the consumption of natural resources and the capacity for environmental regeneration through the contact with beings other than humans, living and non-living, regulated by a series of precautions. The researchers' hypothesis is that multispecies kinship allows us to understand both the creation and sustainability of the fertility/vitality of coexistence networks as well as their depredation/extinction in terms of the rupture of relationships between beings through separation and abandonment, configuring what they call the cosmopolitics of care.

An article by a postgraduate student in anthropology at UFAM who is a member of the Tuyuka people presents the vision of the Amazon territory as tõkowiseri: "a ceremonial house that makes life bubble up." He reports that this vision comes from the ancient understanding of the cosmo experience by the "specialists (kumua, baya, and, yaiwa) who care for the cosmic levels and all their inhabitants."

Faced with any action that will affect the inhabitants of another house (forest, water, air, etc.), these "experts" from the northwest Amazon ask for permission through the performance of ritual ceremonies with the aim of obtaining fruits, fish, game, and offering protection, tranquility, understanding, and invitations to the ceremonial party, explains the author.

Another indigenous researcher, from the Waiwai ethnic group, joins the dossier with an article about moments that have significantly transformed the trajectory of his people in the Wayamu Territory, including the contact with missionaries. The author also addresses his discovery of archaeology and how this made it possible to reconnect with an important part of the Waiwai history. This contact with history made him think about the "need to talk about indigenous archaeology and change a little of what has been said about the past of the Amazon."

The dossier is completed by a review of the book Sob os Tempos do Equinócio: Oito Mil Anos de História na Amazônia Central (2022), by archaeologist Eduardo Goés Neves, director of USP's Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Other sections

The issue also includes three other sets of articles. The first, “Climate Change,” includes analyses of the climate disaster in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in 2024, the influence of deforestation on climate refuges in the Amazon, the impacts of climate change on the Amazonian sociobioeconomy, and the effects of climate change on agriculture.

Two articles comprise a section dedicated to the work of German philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-1993), one of Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) disciples but a strong critic of the latter's adherence to Nazism. One of the texts addresses Jonas's critique of the dualism that led to the separation between human beings and nature, and how this is the basis of the "wave of innovations in the current agri-food system, whose technological frontier seeks precisely to emancipate human nutrition from its dependence on soil, climate, and animals." The other article discusses the current relevance of Jonas's thinking based on the three axes that characterize his philosophical concerns: gnosis, life, and the relationship between technology and ethics.

The final set of texts in issue #112 brings three complementary articles to the dossier "Municipal Elections in São Paulo: Problems and Challenges," published in Estudos Avançados #111. They are studies about the performance of elementary school students in the city and the management of educational policies, the challenges for public cultural policies in São Paulo, and a discussion about the possible profile of an ideal voter who investigates candidacies in a multifaceted way and not just based on a single criterion.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Amazonia Against the Anthropocene

Amazonia in Symbiosis: Traces of Humankinds Facing the Anthropocene - Miguel Aparício, Claide de Paula Moraes, Anne Rapp Py-Daniel, and Eduardo Góes Neves
An Archaeology of Forest Peoples - Vinicius Honorato and Bruna Rocha
Domestication of Amazonian Landscapes - Charles R. Clement, Maria Julia Ferreira, Mariana Franco Cassino, and Juliano Franco de Moraes
Forest Cuisine – Indigenous Techniques in Amazonian Food Production - Gilton Mendes dos Santos and Lorena França
Tõkowiseri: Kumuánica, Bayaroánica, and Yaiwánica Cosmovivences - Justino Sarmento Rezende
Countercolonial Autonomies Against the Capitalocene in Amazonia: the Lower Tapajós Indigenous Movement - Raquel Tupinambá and James A. Fraser
A History of How the Waiwai of Amazonia Have Been Building and Now Telling Their Archaeologies - Jaime Xamen Wai Wai
What do Paleoecological Data Tell Us About the Amazon Anthropocene? - Jennifer Watling, S. Yoshi Maezumi, Myrtle P. Shock, and José Iriarte
Kinship With the Land and Indigenous Cosmopolitics of Care - Ana Gabriela Morim de Lima and Nicole Soares-Pinto
Archaeology to Live in the Future - Marcia Bezerra

Climate Change

Brazil’s Worst Climate Disaster: Rainstorms and Flooding in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in April-May 2024 - Jose A. Marengo et al.
Deforestation Restricts Climate Havens in Amazonia - Calil Torres-Amaral, Luciano Jorge Serejo dos Anjos, Everaldo Barreiros de Souza, and Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira
Impacts of Climate Change on the Sociobioeconomy of Amazonia - Diego Oliveira Brandão, Julia Arieira, and Carlos A. Nobre
Climate Change, Agriculture, and Cattle Farming: Impacts, Mitigation, and Adaptation. Challenges and Opportunities - Eduardo Delgado Assad and Maria Leonor Ribeiro Casimiro Lopes Assad

Hans Jonas

The Agrifood System Through the Lens of Hans Jonas' Philosophical Biology - Ricardo Abramovay
Hans Jonas, a Philosopher of Our Time - Jelson Oliveira

Municipal Elections in São Paulo: Problems and Challenges II

The Issue of Elementary Education in the City of São Paulo - Bernardete A. Gatti
Contemporary Challenges for Cultural Public Policies in the City of São Paulo - Lia Calabre and Ana Paula do Val
How to Be a Demanding Voter and an Ideal Candidate - Marcos S. Buckeridge and Arlindo Philippi Júnior

In the midst of the campaign for this year's municipal elections, when candidates are expected to present an agenda of proposals, issue #111 of IEA's journal Estudos Avançados brings a wide range of analyses and proposals on the main problems of the city of São Paulo in order to contribute to the public debate on the priorities to be addressed by the next municipal administration. The digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

The publication's editor, Sérgio Adorno, emphasizes that in a city where complex networks of social and institutional relations are established "the main challenge to governance lies precisely in promoting sustainable development with equity and social justice, with respect for the environment, with the participation of the most diverse social groups in decision-making that affects the lives of the greatest number of people, and with the promotion of a culture of respect for human rights".

These challenges have guided the composition of the dossier "Municipal Elections in São Paulo: Problems and Challenges," with 15 articles authored by 40 researchers from different institutions in areas such as urban planning, public health, education, sociology, economics, administration, and management of public policies.

A fundamental factor in meeting the demands of the people of São Paulo - as long as political decisions are made and procedures are established - is the appropriate allocation of budgetary resources. This is the concern of the article that opens the dossier: "Reassessing São Paulo’s Budget Management Post-2014: From Resource Scarcity to Surplus," by Ursula Dias Peres, from USP's School of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (EACH) at USP.

She defends "the need for greater pressure and control" for the effective use of budget resources. According to her, this is important to avoid the repetition of what happened between 2018 and 2022, when a set of factors led to the accumulation of a cash balance of more than R$20 billion, which "remained idle, despite the unmet demands of the population."

The work is the result of the analysis of a set of revenue, expenditure, and personnel structure data collected for the period of 2003 to 2023, in addition to interviews with key players in budgetary governance. Peres explains the factors that led to the municipality's surplus and indicates ways for the governance of the São Paulo budget to stop being characterized by a "significant increase in the political discretion of the head of the Executive."

Security, health, and education

A recent survey by Datafolha, one of the most important and complete research institutes in Brazil, indicates that 20% of São Paulo residents point to security as their main concern. Health and education are tied in second place, both cited as the main problems by 18% of the group surveyed. The importance of security as an issue in the São Paulo elections is addressed in an article by four researchers from the Brazilian Public Security Forum. They reflect on the shift in this agenda, "transferred from a predominantly state-level agenda to a central part of the city’s mayoral electoral strategies."

The hypothesis developed by the researchers is that homicides were given the status of "the city’s main public safety problem between the 1990s and 2000s." However, "there has been a change in the scenario with their reduction. The focus has become Cracolândia (literally "Crackland" in Portuguese, a popular denomination for a region in São Paulo) as well as the sharp increase in property crimes, especially cell phone thefts and robberies. These factors have led to the "construction of an acute scenario of fear and insecurity among the population of São Paulo."

They warn that "deciphering the sphinx of public security" in São Paulo and other municipalities in Brazil "is still a risky and violent challenge for significant portions of the population, even more so in a time of social 'cultural war.'" The unknown arises from the doubt of whether "the new protagonism of municipalities in public security will be accompanied by reforms in the institutional architecture and organizational cultures of public security forces or if it is just a way of dissipating social demands and pressures for social justice, violence prevention, and citizenship."

The challenges of public health are the subject of an article by six researchers from USP's School of Public Health (FSP). They believe that the multiplicity of health service providers that operate under contract with the municipal government creates difficulties in state regulatory processes. "It is imperative to improve these regulatory processes of the public-private relationship in order to ensure the intentionality and public control of the health system," they state.

The authors also advocate strengthening governance structures, especially in relation to the state government, which has a "large and strategic installed capacity for health services," unlike what occurs in most Brazilian states.

Rounding out the trio of main concerns for the people of São Paulo, the issue of education in the city is addressed from the perspective of the challenges for the municipality and the state arising from the relationship between the aging population and adult education (EJA). The article by Marcelo Dante Pereira, from the Municipal Education Network, and Maria Clara Di Pierro, a senior professor at USP's School of Education (FE), is the result of a demographic and educational diagnosis of the elderly population in São Paulo and a comparative case study in the state and municipal education networks of the city.

The authors list four recommendations for São Paulo's future management. The first is to strengthen the public provision of EJA to meet the potential demand of elderly people with low levels of education, especially in the outskirts. This provision should be accompanied by guidance processes for the adaptation to school by elderly people, who feel many impacts when returning to EJA. The third recommendation is that education networks seek technical advisory support for the development of normative guidelines and the implementation of ongoing training on topics that address overcoming ageism and the promotion of educational practices with elderly people.

Finally, they recommend the production of intersectoral policies involving Education and other state and municipal departments, and the State and Municipal Councils for the Elderly, in order to encourage the active search for elderly people with low levels of education in addition to include the issue of aging in the continuing education of teachers and technicians.

Labour and mobility

Despite the recent reduction in the unemployment rate, the supply of jobs and their quality remain a relevant concern for a significant portion of São Paulo residents, especially in light of the city's economic transformations. These issues are present in an analysis of the city's labour market over the last decade by researchers from USP's Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB), the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), and the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). They highlight how trends in the workforce, unemployment, and occupational patterns affect income inequality and poverty.

The article discusses the recent period based on data from 2012 to 2023 raised by the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Contínua) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The main convergences and divergences in terms of occupational polarization, income distribution, and poverty in the São Paulo and national scenarios are addressed. Some dynamics related to the intersectionality of race and gender are also presented.

According to the researchers, everything indicates that the labour market in São Paulo tends to become more unequal and polarized, diminishing its role as the center of the country's social transformations "even when it combined 'growth and poverty.'" In light of this scenario, they point to two strategic vectors for new opportunities: incorporating social inclusion as a goal, including taking its capacity to generate jobs and income into account, through the expansion of public policies (health, education, and social assistance); and investing in new productive conglomerates based on high productivity and employment potential, given the city's continued prominence on the national level.

"These technological leadership actions in new sectors and segments – in a context of 'new industrialization' as advocated by the federal government – ​​could even be developed with a view to reversing the city’s current spatial hierarchy," they conclude.

Largely associated with the labour market issue are mobility problems in the city, where a large part of the population lives far from their workplaces. "There are many economic, political, and social problems affecting transportation and urban mobility that will await the next elected mayor of the city of São Paulo and will require courage to innovate," state the three researchers of UFABC in the synopsis of their article on the necessary transformations in urban mobility in São Paulo.

They consider it essential to implement an "unorthodox policy" to transform the current scenario of urban mobility in São Paulo. Among the changes they highlight "the most comprehensive and systemic ones, proposed by the Triple Zero Mobility coalition – zero fares, zero emissions, and zero traffic deaths." The researchers mention another proposal by the coalition: the creation of a Unified Mobility System (SUM) with interfederative management based on principles such as equity, accessibility, and sustainability.

They also advocate an "effective break with the public transport pricing model, which has already been innovated in the city of São Paulo with the Zero Fare model." They associate this action with the urgency of rethinking the sector’s financing, "considering the fair distribution of resources, and overcoming political and technological challenges to achieve a fairer and more sustainable mobility."

Housing and zoning

Nabil Bonduki, a professor at USP's Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design (FAU), former city councilman and former Secretary of Culture for the city of São Paulo, is the author of the article "Balancing Population Density and Verticalization: Preserving São Paulo’s Heritage and Environment." The study reflects on the regulation of land use and occupation in São Paulo, taking the guidelines of the Strategic Master Plan and the implementation of the instruments provided for therein as references, in addition to the need to adjust complementary legislation.

The article seeks to show that the population density of São Paulo is absolutely necessary to meet the current and future housing needs of the Metropolitan Region, but that verticalization and the real estate transformations essential to accommodate more people in the same space must have limits and cannot destroy the city's cultural, environmental, and urban references.

Other articles in the dossier on land use and occupation in the city discuss the management of territorial planning instruments based on the idea of ​​urban design as a new level of zoning prevalence, the predominance of corporate urbanism to the detriment of a redistributive and cooperative one, and the role of urbanization in history and its contemporary transformations.

The dossier is completed with works on sustainability, the reduction of inequalities, the financial situation of the elderly, the privatization of the Anhangabaú Valley, and the patterns of spatial distribution of votes for São Paulo city councilors in the 2020 elections.

Impacts of Artificial Intelligence

The second set of texts contains five of the papers presented at the 1st International Seminar on Artificial Intelligence: Democracy and Social Impacts, held by the Center for Artificial Intelligence, a partnership between USP, IBM, and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). One of the articles presents tools developed by researchers and professionals in computing, engineering, and mathematics for processing public political documents to make the information more accessible to citizens.

In another article, written by computer science and law researchers, they propose a path to a new paradigm of fair and ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content moderation on the internet, in which the State and platforms play a relevant role. According to the authors, this path involves the adoption of explainable AI associated with transparent and legitimate criteria defined by society.

Three computer science professionals use their article to present a project aimed at reviewing several training and testing databases with the purpose of mitigating and reducing personal biases in a multimodal model for classifying urban-social categories. In the foundation of the project, they used theoretical references from discursive linguistics, the construction of morality, and analytical approaches to bias/variance. They state that this allowed the work to assertively achieve the objective of bias mitigation, which, "although being a laborious task, is of algorithmic-social importance to maintain plurality and robustness in public data."

Based on studies of the recent promotion of Big Data and AI for the production of official statistics for the United Nations, two researchers from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) present an analysis of some transformations in public statistics produced by national statistical institutes around the world. The analysis was carried out through empirical research based on theoretical contributions from the sociology of quantification, and science and technology studies.

The use of AI in the private sector is also addressed. Researchers in the area of ​​management examine decisions made or supported by AI in organizations. The article summarizes a study based on secondary data, analyzing 128 cases of AI use in order to understand how it has contributed to organizational decision-making. According to the authors, it was possible to identify a greater representation of AI adoption in the areas of operations and marketing, predominantly at the operational decision-making level and as a support for decision-making.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Municipal Elections in São Paulo: Problems and Challenges

Reassessing São Paulo’s Budget Management Post-2014: From Resource Scarcity to Surplus - Ursula Dias Peres
Challenges in Municipal Management of the Unified Health System in São Paulo - Aylene Bousquat et al.
Polarization, Inequality, and Poverty: Dilemmas and Challenges of São Paulo’s Labor Market - Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa, Ian Prates, Ângela Cristina Tepassê, and Levi Cristiano Oliveira
Addressing Youth and Adult Education Amidst São Paulo’s Aging Population - Marcelo Dante Pereira and Maria Clara Di Pierro
The Financialization of Old Age and the Convergence of State and Market Interests - Guita Grin Debert and Jorge Félix
Drastic Measures for Urban Mobility in São Paulo - Silvana Zioni, Thiago Von Zeidler Gomes, and Priscila da Mota Moraes
Balancing Population Density and Verticalization: Preserving São Paulo’s Heritage and Environment - Nabil Bonduki
São Paulo in the 21st Century: Instruments for Urban Management and Territorial Challenges - Sarah Feldman
Pursuing Sustainability and Reducing Inequalities in São Paulo: A Unified Process - Claudio Salvadori Dedecca and Cassiano José Bezerra Marques Trovão
Corporate Vs. Cooperative Urbanism: Is Responsible Management Possible in São Paulo? - Nadia Somekh, Bruna Fregonezi, and Guilherme Del’Arco
The Political Economy of Urbanization: A Reinterpretation in Light of Municipal Elections - Ricardo Carlos Gaspar
Critical Perceptions on the Privatization of Vale do Anhangabaú Since 2021 - André Biselli Sauaia and Anália Maria Marinho de Carvalho Amorim
Fear, Violence, and Politics in São Paulo: Who Should Decipher the Public Security Sphinx? - Renato Sérgio de Lima, Guaracy Mingardi, David Marques, and Thais Carvalho
Challenges in Municipal Management to Reduce Inequality in São Paulo - Jorge Abrahão and Igor Pantoja
Spatial Voting Patterns for the São Paulo City Council: A Study Based on the 2020 Elections - Lucas de Oliveira Gelape, Joyce Luz, and Débora Thomé

Artificial Intelligence: Democracy and Social Impacts

Decision-Making in Organizations: What Changes with Artificial intelligence? - Abraham Sin Oih Yu et al.
Public Statistics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: The Case of the UN Global Platform - Oscar Arruda d’Alva and Edemilson Paraná
Bias Mitigation of Multimodal Datasets in an Urban-Social Category Classifier - Luciano C. Lugli, Daniel Abujabra Merege, and Rafael Pillon Almeida
Explainable AI to Mitigate the Lack of Transparency and Legitimacy in Internet Moderation - Thomas Palmeira Ferraz et al.
Augmented Democracy: Artificial Intelligenc as a Tool to Fight Disinformation  - Alexandre Alcoforado et al.

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

"The current levels of technological development place the old dilemmas between the positive or perverse effects of the use of technologies in all fields of social existence under new perspectives," says sociologist Sérgio Adorno, editor of IEA's journal Estudos Avançados, when presenting the dossier "Human Implications of Technosciences," the main one of its 110th issue. The digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

Adorno emphasizes that the opening article of the dossier, "Diagnostics of Contemporaneity," by semiologist Lucia Santaella, former holder of the Oscar Sala Chair (a partnership of the IEA with the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee), highlights the characteristics of the so-called second era of the internet, "characterized by big data, the explosion of data, and datafication." The author identifies five attributes of this era: hybridity, temporal entanglement, omnipresent interactivity, acceleration, and discursive shattering.

Fragmentation

According to Santaella, "the political, cultural, and psychic consequences of these disruptions are many and profound, including the fragmentation and dispersion of old concepts of people, populism, public space, public debate, etc." For her, "ill-informed, rhetorical, and nostalgic sensationalism does nothing to help facing the challenges." As a militant for the advancement of knowledge throughout her entire career, she defends the motto "to understand well to act better, even though this implies engagement in the ethics of the intellect that costs time, dedication, and a lot of study of what counts against the intellectual farces that breed in self-indulgent gregariousness."

Consumption and hypervigilance

Adorno states that the other six articles in the dossier seek to dialogue with Santaella's theoretical-empirical perspective through the analysis of various themes. One of them is the articulation between the experience of consumption as subjectivity and the transformations in global markets over the last 40 years, the subject of “Data Capitalism and Aesthetic Wars,” by Abel Reis and Silvia Piva.

In "Sociotechnical Silencing and the Limits of Instrumental Power," Alcides Peron and Anderson Röhe discuss how electronic resources enable not only hypervigilance, but also risk classification and predictive devices. They warn that these systems, despite acting in crime prediction and risk management, provide the State with a non-violent form of power focused on shaping individuals' behaviors and decisions.

However, digital technologies also enable innovative educational perspectives. An example of this is discussed in the article "Aesthetics, Playability, and Narrative for the Anthropocene," in which Clayton Policarpo, Guilherme Cestari, and Luiz Napole study two video games that, through immersion, premises, and proposed critical scenarios, relate environmental impacts and dystopian perspectives to the future of the human species, a perspective in which "some of the epistemological, ethical, and identity challenges of the Anthropocene are present."

Flying car

A matter of the moment is the technological context of development of the so-called flying car, whose already developed and future models tend to be autonomous (without a pilot). Magaly Prado and Gustavo Galbiatti are the authors of "A Lot of Hot Air? A Feasibility Analysis of Flying Cars as Emission-Free Autonomous Machines." Based on interviews with experts and related bibliography, they analyze technical issues, environmental sustainability, and economic viability of the new vehicle.

Adorno comments that the dossier also revisits "old questions regarding the impact of digital technology in the Brazilian context, focusing on its virtues arising from the expansion of sharing and access to information for a greater number of citizens, but also its dangers in terms of possible effects of domination."

The final article in the dossier, "Technototalitarianism and the Risks for Democracy and Individuals," by Eder Van Pelt, addresses the risks of legitimacy in the exercise of power with the use of new technologies in a possible technocracy that makes the political use of technologies as instruments for controlling individuals' activities. He defends the need to think about effective means for the integration between specialized technology systems and democracy, which leads to concrete possibilities for a more consistent and participatory public debate, especially with the inclusion of all those affected by these new control devices.

Literature

The issue also contains two sets of texts. One of them is the "Presences" section, a collection of "suggestive and rich essays on literary criticism," according to Adorno, as well as articles on gender issues. The essays on literature address the following themes: a self-criticism by Euclides da Cunha regarding the meaning of the War of Canudos; precariousness and memory in the fiction of Nélida Piñon and Ana Teresa Torres; the edition of an unpublished poem by Caldas Barbosa; the decomposition of the detective novel genre into a short story by Machado de Assis; the origins of poetry in French by Sérgio Milliet; and the theatrical scene in Bahia in 1551/1552 produced by a Jesuit group linked to Father Manuel da Nóbrega.

Women's participation

The meanings and psychological transformations that accompany women's political participation are discussed based on the life trajectory of one of the participants in the World March of Women (a movement started in 2000), feminist and anti-racist activist Helena Nogueira, who died in 2020. Based on Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, and "Fetishism – Colonizing the Other," by Vladimir Safatle, a further text discusses the "fetishism of the equal, one of the ramifications of commodity fetishism," based on the relationships between the characters from the film "The Second Mother," directed by Anna Muylaert. The section ends with an article about the emancipation of women and the presence of science and mathematics in the newspaper O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino, a "fortnightly, literary, recreational, news, and political journal" published in Rio de Janeiro in 1889 and 1890 by Francisca Senhorinha de Motta Diniz.

Human evolution

The section "Evolution, Nemory, and Discrimination" presents three articles. The first, with the participation of paleoanthropologist Walter Neves, a senior professor at the IEA, provides a synthesis of human evolution with special attention to issues of the Middle Pleistocene (the period when Homo sapiens emerged), advances in the area, and the Brazilian contribution to the topic. The second critically analyzes how the legacy of the professors of the French Mission at the former Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages and Literature at USP became a relevant aspect of memorialistics among participants in the history course. The third theme of the section is the scarcity of conservatives in American academia, with an assessment of the relative strength of four hypotheses for this: meritocracy (less academic aptitude), discrimination, conversion (the environment inducing to the left), and self-selection (voluntary option in not joining the academy).

The issue is completed with reviews of four books: "Arrabalde: In Search of the Amazon," by João Moreira Salles; "The Whiteness Pact," by Cida Bento; "The Margins of Fiction," by Jacques Rancière; and "Conflict Management and Justice: Small Claims in a US Court," by Ann Arbor.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Human implications of the technosciences

A Diagnosis of Contemporaneity - Lucia Santaella
Data Capitalism and Aesthetic Wars - Abel Reis and Silvia Piva
Sociotechnical Silencing and the Limits of "Instrumental Power" - Alcides Eduardo dos Reis Peron and Anderson Röhe
Aesthetics, Playability, and Narrative for the Anthropocene - Clayton Policarpo, Guilherme Henrique de Oliveira Cestari, and Luiz Felipe Napole
A Lot of Hot Air? A Feasibility Analysis of Flying Cars as Emission-Free Autonomous Machines - Magaly Prado and Gustavo Galbiatti
Consumerism, Citizenship, and Surveillance: Refections on Technological Expansion and its Impact on the Brazilian Context - Bruno Pompeu, Eneus Trindade, and Silvio Koiti Sato
Technototalitarianism and the Risks for Democracy and Individuals - Eder Van Pelt

Presences

The "Madness of Crowds." Criticism and Self-Criticism in Euclides da Cunha - Ulysses Pinheiro
Fictions of the Spoils. Precariousness and Memory in the Writings of Nélida Piñon and Ana Teresa Torres - Jesús Arellano
An Unpublished Poem by Caldas Barbosa: Introduction, Edition, and Commentary - Caio Cesar Esteves de Souza and Leonardo Zuccaro
Machado de Assis and His Parody of the Detective Novel - Cleber Vinicius do Amaral Felipe
In the Beginning it Was Serge: Sérgio Milliet’s Poetry in French - Valter Cesar Pinheiro
Manuel da Nóbrega and the Performance of Merchandise - Sérgio de Carvalho
Taking the Floor: Helena Nogueira and the Spoken Word as a Political and Psychological Achievement - Mariana Luciano Afonso
The Mechanism of the "Fetishism of the Equal" and its Revelations in the Film "The Second Mother," by Anna Muylaert - Camila Franquini Pereira
The Emancipation of Women and the Presence of Science and Mathematics in the Fortnightly Journal "O Quinze de Novembro do Sexo Feminino" - Zaqueu Vieira Oliveira and Victoria Maria Lopes Corrêa

Evolution, memory, and discrimination

The Middle Pleistocene in Human Evolution - Walter Neves and Gabriel Rocha
The French Mission in USP’s History Department: Inaugural Report and Monumentalization (1949-1971) - Diego José Fernandes Freire
Four Hypotheses for the Conservative Dearth in North American Academia - Pedro Franco

Reviews

New Words in Amazonian Literature - Jacques Marcovitch
Pact of Whiteness: Institutional Racism and Inequalities in the Workplace - Raul Gomes de Almeida
The Space-Time of Contemporary Literature: on Jacques Rancière’s "The Edges of Fiction" - João Arthur Macieira
On Fairness, Legal Rites, and Bargaining: An Anthropological Reading of the United States’ Small Claims Courts - Eduardo C.B. Bittar