IASs from all continents discuss strategies for cooperation and their influence in international research

Director of the IEA/USP, Roseli de Deus Lopes (left) spoke at one of the sessions of the meeting.

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