Measure enables full participation in projects of the Institute

By instituting the Sabbatical Year Program at the IEA, USP's president justified the measure with the "need for a suitable environment for reflection and release of the professors from their teaching and administrative burdens to fully participate in projects" of the Institute.

Zago also highlights the specificity of the IEA, "which aims to research and discuss, in a comprehensive manner, fundamental questions of science, technology, arts, culture and other areas of knowledge, stimulating the generation of new ideas, contributing to the analysis of social issues and formulating public policies in order to integrate scientists and intellectuals in interdisciplinary projects."

In an unprecedented initiative for USP and the Brazilian academia, president Marco Antonio Zago approved a resolution on June 19 establishing the Sabbatical Year Program at the IEA, an old aspiration of the Institute.

From 2016, the IEA will annually host six University professors on sabbatical for the development of individual research project.

The program has the support of the Dean of Research, which will offer up to R$ 12,000 for each approved project.

To apply for one of the six vacancies, the candidates need to have at least seven years of effective exercise of their functions in full devotion to teaching and research (RDIDP), and submit a CV and a research project to be developed. The project should include the objectives, the justification and the work plan for the desired sabbatical (six or twelve months). The open call for projects to be conducted in 2016 runs from September 9 to November 6, 2015.

Applicants should submit projects related to and / or referenced by the four meta-curatorships (Commons, Transformation, Glocal and Abstraction) that were established in 2012 by the Institutional Project. They must also show proof that their participation in the program has been approved by the department council - or equivalent - and by the congregation or their unit or organ of origin.

The Institute's Board will be in charge of selecting the participants of the programafter consulting the Institute Research Committee.

The selected professors will conduct research at the IEA only, getting relieved of their activities, including teaching, at the unit or organ to which they are linked. Every professor in the exercise of a sabbatical year will have the following duties: to conduct at least one public lecture per semester and to produce a new and original paper or other outcome (book or work of art, for example). In the case of producing a paper, this will be published in the journal "Estudos Avançados" and / or the IEA website.

Related material

PREVIOUS MEETINGS

Workshop: Advanced Studies and the University
October, 2011 (São Paulo)

• Video (in Portuguese)

2nd National Meeting of Brazilian Institutes for Advanced Studies
August, 2013 (Porto Alegre)

• Photos
• News

The 3rd National Meeting of Brazilian Institutes for Advanced Studies will be held on August 11 and 12 in Belo Horizonte, with organization of the Institute of Transdisciplinary Advanced Studies (IEAT) of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

The meeting will be attended by the most important leaders of the main IASs based in universities of the Federal District, and of the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Pernambuco and Ceará. It will resume the discussions that took place in 2011 (São Paulo) and in 2013 (Porto Alegre). The mechanisms of interaction and integration between IASs (including the feasibility of creating a permanent entity), the promotion of initiatives to inter- and transdisciplinarity and the proposals to expand the international presence of the institutes will be addressed.

The participating IASs are:

Photos of the meeting

Letter of the meeting

The invasion and occupation of the buildings by the students ended after 42 days when the courts determined repossession. It all began on October 1, after an unsuccessful attempt by students to invade the meeting of the University Council (Co), which approved the new rules for the electoral process for President and Deputy President of USP.

Shortly after entering the lobby of the hall in which the Co holds its meetings, the scene was of utter devastation, including broken and piled furniture, walls and floors filled with “pichação” (a sort of graffiti), broken glass, used fire extinguishers, destroyed models of USP’s future buildings – such as the one where IEA’s headquarters will be located - mattresses, clothes and shoes, plus lots of garbage. The situation was the same all over the ground level. Other spaces showed the violation of doors, cupboards and drawers, not to mention all the scattered official documents on the floor, most of which crushed and trampled.

When climbing the stairs to the 5th floor of buiding K, place of IEA’s headquarters, signs of further devastation were everywhere: more “pichação” in the lobbies of each floor, destroyed electronic devices and surveillance cameras, dirt and more scattered documents.

Upon arriving at the IEA, the worst expectations were confirmed. In a vase at the beginning of the floor, three modern keyboards were stacked among scattered computer memories. What was seen next was the result of the action of a band of criminals: doors broken into, equipment stolen, all cabinets and drawers open, papers on tables and the floor.

It is important to point out that not only material damage has happened. Leaders, researchers and the institute’s staff suffered moral damages by the degradation of their working environment and the violation of their private properties and computer content.

On this day after, the IEA is trying to return to normalcy, which will not happen anytime soon. It is time to organize whatever is possible and count for losses, including broken and stolen equipment, in order to make a police report and also to, once again, prepare an acquisition list to replace what has been destroyed and taken away. In the last 42 days we had to conduct our activities in disrepair and this way we will go on until we equip ourselves again and are able to use our main event room, the most affected by theft and vandalism.

There is something very wrong, absurd and unacceptable when a university has to deal with losses such as stolen equipment and damaged assets due to events led by students.

The IEA vehemently repudiates everything that has happened and asks: how was this possible? Why? Until when will we be subject to facts like these?

The IEA, as USP's platform for interdisciplinary scientific, institutional and socio-cultural criticism, is at the disposal of the community and society at large to reflect, analyze and discuss the situation, wishing for dialogue, understanding and the stability of this university.

USP, November 13, 2013

Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo

Related material

The new professional and occupational requirements, the precariousness of employment, and the suppression of rights and guarantees are the central themes of the dossier "Work and Exclusion," part of Estudos Avançados #108, whose digital version is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

The issue also features a set of 11 articles on the activity of Alfredo Bosi (1936-2021) as a literary critic and engaged thinker. Professor emeritus from the University of São Paulo's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Bosi has been director of the IEA and editor of the journal Estudos Avançados for 30 years.

Paradox

In the editorial, the journal's editor, Sérgio Adorno, points out that, "in a parallel and paradoxical way, the advanced forms of work organization represented by the complex digitization of industrial production are articulated and coexist with the reinvention of slavery, which was believed to be banished with the emergence of modern society."

An example of the dynamics of this hateful practice is reported in an article with the main results of research on contemporary slave labor carried out in Açailândia, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, based on the narratives of workers rescued from this condition.

Another extremely relevant issue addressed in the dossier is the analysis of the discussions that have led to the ratification of Convention no. 189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) by Brazil in 2018. It refers to the establishment of dignified working conditions for domestic workers, a category that brings together more than 7 million workers in the country.

Two articles address the socioeconomic impacts of infrastructure works and distortions in the production chain. The first case is discussed in a study on the adequacy of residents of a beach on the coast of the state of Pará to the construction of a highway on the site. Another article adresses the maintenance of injustices in the production chain of Brazil nuts in quilombos in the region of Alto Trombetas, also in Pará.

Literature and Society

The essays on Bosi especially examine aspects of his work as a literary critic, articulated with social and political concerns that have always been present in his trajectory. The composition of a dossier on "an outstanding humanist, who has denounced violence and the abusive use of power to seek solutions that reconciled the conflict, typical of human relations, with the solidarity inherent in the lives of common men and women," in the words of Adorno, could not be different.

He highlights three concepts present in Bosi's works that are discussed in the dossier: resistance, ideology, and dialectic. The first focuses on the analysis of the poem "The Machine of the World," by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and on Bosi’s reflections since the 1970s, when he wrote the essay Poesia e Resistência ("Poetry and Resistance").

The topic is taken up again in a text that articulates literature and cinema, using films by Roberto Rosselini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and is also present in an essay on candomblé featured both in the novel "Tent of Miracles," by Jorge Amado, and in its respective cinematographic adaptation by Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

Traits of Bosi's personality and his passion for poetry are recalled in an article that comments on his book O Ser e o Tempo da Poesia ("The Being and the Time of Poetry"). There is also the identification of a psychoanalytic approach of the critic in his analysis of "Counselor Ayres’ Memorial," by Machado de Assis.

The reflections of Bosi and other critics are addressed in a study on the critical position of Graciliano Ramos in relation to the so-called Romance de 30, a set of literary works produced in the second phase of Brazilian Modernism, between 1930 and 1945.

The meaning and functioning of the concept of dialectic expressed by Bosi in the book "Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization" are discussed in a dense article that articulates several aspects, such as the reception of the work by critic Roberto Schwartz and "a certain affinity of interests and procedures" with spectropoetics, a philosophical and critical approach developed by Jacques Derrida.

Other essays address Bosi's work on the short story as a literary form and on the poet's position as an intellectual in the face of war, with reference to the poem "The Rose of the People," by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and España, Aparta de Mí este Cáliz, by César Vallejo.

Reviews

Issue #108 also features reviews of five books: Dar Corpo ao Impossível: O Sentido da Dialética a Partir de Theodor Adorno ("Giving Body to the Impossible: The Sense of Dialectic from Theodor Adorno" (Autêntica, 2019), by Vladimir Safatle; the translation to Theodor Adorno's "Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism" (Editora Unesp, 2020); Teatro Legislativo ("Legislative Theater") (Editora 34, 2020), by Augusto Boal; Imaginação como Presença: O Corpo e seus Afetos na Experiência Literária ("Imagination as Presence: The Body and its Affections in Literary Experience," (Editora UFPR, 2020), by Lígia Gonçalves Diniz; and Conversa Comigo ("Talk to Me") (Penalux, 2019), by Ricardo Ramos Filho.

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

Work and Exclusion

In the Webs of Slavery: Perceptions of Workers Rescued from Situations of Slave Labor in the state of Maranhão - Luciano Rodrigues Costa, Alessandra Gomes Mendes Tostes, Ana Pereira dos Santos, and Bráulio Figueiredo Alves da Silva
Memories from the Construction of the PA-458 Highway Connecting Bragança to Ajuruteua in Northeastern Pará on Brazil’s Amazon Coast - Zenúbia Oliveira Silva, Francisco Pereira de Oliveira, and César Martins de Souza
Brazil nut Farming and Quilombos in Alto Trombetas (State of Pará): A Proposal for Socio-Environmental Justice - Felipe Souto Alves and Patrícia Chaves de Oliveira
ILO Convention no. 189: Notes on the Ratification Process in Brazil - Thays Monticelli and Alexandre Barbosa Fraga
Agricultural Policy for Agribusiness: The Use of Taxpayers’ Money to Indirectly Benefit Foreign Multinational Corporations - Graciella Corcioli and Gabriel da Silva Medina
Indigenous Peoples of the Desert: The Bedouins of the Negev. Congress in Beer Sheva, 2000: The Future of Indigenous Peoples - Betty Mindlin

Alfredo Bosi

Faustian Pact and Resistance in the Poem "The Machine of the World" - Marcus Vinicius Mazzari
Alfredo Bosi: Two Approaches - Alcides Villaça
Traits of Psychoanalysis "in Two Figures from Machado de Assis" - Cleusa Rios P. Passos
Times of Insomnia: Graciliano Ramos and the Inflections of the Neorealistic Novels of the 1930s - Erwin Torralbo Gimenez
Poetry and War: Action and Melancholy in Vallejo and Drummond - Pedro Meira Monteiro
Different Forms of Resistance Poetry - Fernando Baião Viotti
Dialectics and Alteritarian Politics in Brazil and the "Dialectic of Colonization" - Ravel Giordano Paz
Alfredo Bosi and the Short Forms - Diego A. Molina
Libertarian Christianity and Redemption in Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini - Paulo Roberto Ramos
Aganju, Xangô, Alapalá: Religious Racism, Resistance and Justice in "Tent of Miracles" (the Novel and the Film) - Soleni Biscouto Fressato
Women’s Cinema as Resistance to Dictatorship: Readings from a Research Source - Ana Maria Veiga

Reviews

Dialectics and Political Action: On Dar Corpo ao Impossível, by Vladimir Safatle - Ronaldo Tadeu de Souza
Adorno, Fascism, and the Aporias of Reason - Fabio Mascaro Querido
What Makes Representative Government Democratic? - Gustavo Hessmann Dalaqua
Reflections on Heideggerian Aspects of Lígia Gonçalves Diniz’s Essay - Rafael Fava Belúzio
Understanding Made of Dialogues and Silences - Ieda Lebensztayn

Photo: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP

The participants of the first edition of the Intercontinental Academia will gather in March (6-18) for the second phase of the project. Almost a year after the meeting in São Paulo, organized by the IEA, the thirteen young researchers will complete their studies on the subject "time" in Nagoya and present the content to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

This phase is being organized by the Nagoya University's Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) with the technical support of the IEA. In addition to the former director of the Brazilian institute, Martin Grossmann, also a member of the scientific committee of the project, two employees of the IEA will be in Nagoya. Rafael Borsanelli and Sergio Bernardo have been invited by the Japanese institute to integrate the technical team of the event.

Toshihide Maskawa	Ryoji Noyori

The programme includes conferences with two Nobel Prize winners: physicist Toshihide Maskawa, awarded in 2008, and chemist Ryoji Noyori, awarded in 2001. Maskawa will give a master class on March 7, at 1.30 pm (Nagoya time), followed by Noyori, who will speak at 3 pm. Maskawa and Noyori are two out of six Nobel Prize winners from Nagoya University.

Besides them, more than 30 specialists in biology, physics, humanities, social sciences and arts will give conferences throughout the 12-day meeting. The president of Nagoya University, Michinari Hamaguchi, will discuss higher education and academic research in Japan (March 7, at 6.30, Nagoya time). The former director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Peter Goddard, will talk about the development and the role of institutes for advanced study (March 11, at 1.00 pm, Nagoya time).

The activities will take place on the campuses of Nagoya University and Waseda University, in Tokyo. The full programme can be found here.

All conferences will be broadcast live on the websites of the IEA and the Intercontinental Academia. The videos will also be available on the IEA website later.

The Intercontinental Academia is a project of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), a network that brings together 36 institutes for advanced study of universities from all continents. The IEA-USP and the IAR-Nagoya are responsible for the first edition. The phase held in Brazil was part of the Global Networks of Young Researchers program of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, based on IEA with the support of Itaú Cultural.

The second edition of the Intercontinental Academia will begin on March 7, in Israel, with the theme "human dignity". The organizers are the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung - ZiF), of the Bielefeld University. Akemi Kamimura, a lawyer and human rights activist, is one of the 21 young researchers that will participate in the project, after being nominated by the IEA and approved by the organizing committee.

The electoral college is made up of current and former members of the IEA's Board, the president of the Institute's Research Committee, former directors and deputy directors of the IEA, directors of faculties and research units at USP, and representatives of their congregations in the University Council.

The management project (in Portuguese) for the term of four years presented by Saldiva and Plonski mentions that "one of the great challenges of any new direction is to find an appropriate balance between continuity and innovation."

They highlight the involvement of the IEA in the UBIAS (University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study) network as an indicator of the "concern of the Institute to promote the discussion of global issues and to collaborate with the process of USP's internationalization" and point out the successful dedication of the Institute to debate on topics of interest to Brazilian society.

New themes

Alongside the continuity of the successfully developed activities, the candidates propose three new guidelines:

1. the creation of an Advanced School of Leadership Formation;
2. studies on urbanity and quality of life;
3. the transformation of the University into a transformative University.

Regarding the first item, Saldiva and Plonski propose that the IEA should shelter people who wish for an "immersion in the full range of variables related to managing complex and important issues for the development of pubic policies, taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge available at USP in all its units."

As for urbanity and quality of life, the professors present the proposal to create a space for dialogue and convergence of all stakeholders in proposing scientific studies and research aimed at improving the living of the inhabitants of metropolitan areas.

With regard to the third item, they propose two actions:

1. to make the IEA a reference center that consolidates initiatives aimed at the deep understanding of the processes and prospects for transformation of the University that thrive in the Institute itself or elsewhere at USP;
2. to turn the IEA into the link between USP and the legislative branch (Congress, Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo and city councils of the municipalities where there is a USP campus), in order to contribute to the improvement of legislation on capital issues such as health, education, generation of employment and income, sanitation, environment, energy, transport, public safety and food security.

Installations

In the proposal, the professors consider that the increase of the number of researchers (such as those on sabbatical and the ones joining the new postdocs) requires the adequacy of the physical area of the Institute: "We believe that the quality of the projects to be developed will be the best way to attract institutional and external resources so that the IEA can follow its path of enganging talents and providing them with adequate physical structure of work."

Pathologist Paulo Hilário Nascimento Saldiva, a professor at USP's Faculty of Medicine (FMUSP), is the new deputy director of the IEA-USP. He was elected by the members of the Institute's Board on February 24, when he obtained an absolute majority of votes.

It is the first time that a leader of the IEA-USP is chosen according to the guidelines of the new resolution of USP's Statute, which determines the vote in two rounds. The second round takes places only if a candidate does not obtain the absolute majority of votes in the first round. Until 2014, principals and vice-principals were chosen from a triple list prepared by the members of the Congregation and the Departments' Councils of the respective units - such as the Board for the IEA-USP. The final appointment would then be the president's responsibility.

Saldiva is the successor of Carlos Roberto Ferreira Brandão, a professor of USP's Zoology Museum, who has been deputy director between 2014 and 2015, and is stepping down to become president of the Brazilian Institute of Museums (Ibram), a distinct body of the Ministry of Culture in charge of the administration of federal museums and the formulation of public policies for the area.

Saldiva is a full professor since 1996, having graduated in medicine and obtaining a PhD in pathology from the FMUSP. He has been a member of the Scientific Committee of Harvard University's School of Public Health and member of the Air Quality Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO). He is currently a member of the Council of the City of São Paulo. His research focuses on pathology, pulmonary pathophysiology, respiratory diseases, and environmental health and applied ecology.

Pathologist Paulo Saldiva, from the USP's School of Medicine (FM)

Paulo Saldiva, a pathologist and a professor at the Department of Pathology of the USP's School of Medicine (FM), was the deputy director of the IEA until April 2016. He took office in late February last year, replacing Carlos Roberto Ferreira Brandão, from the USP's Museum of Zoology (MZ). His research focuses on pulmonary pathology, environmental pathology and air pollution. He has been a member of the World Health Organization committee that established air quality standards and of the committe of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, which set the carcinogenic potential of air pollution. From 2004 to 2014, he joined the Science Advisory Committee on air pollution at the Harvard School of Public Health. As director of the IEA, his tenure will last four years.

Ary Plonski, a professor at the USP's Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA)

Guilherme Ary Plonski, who will also hold his position for four years, is an engineer and a professor at the Department of Management of the USP's Faculty of Economics, Management and Accounting (FEA), and at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the USP's Polytechnic School (POLI). He was the managing director (2001-2006) of the Institute of Technological Research of the State of São Paulo (IPT) and president of the National Association of Entities Promoting Innovative Enterprises (ANPROTEC). Plonski integrates the Board of Governors of the Israel Institute of Technology (TECHNION). From December 2012 to April this year he was a member of the IEA's Board, leaving his second term in it to take over his new position.

The electoral college has been made up of the following categories:

Executive manager of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University since 2008, Padberg has a background in history and biological anthropology. Her main research interests are related to interdisciplinarity and the development of universities and science.

By talking to directors and employees about the institutes' strategies, missions, and values, she has brought together aspects related to their functioning and autonomy in relation to the universities where they are based, in addition to their contribution to research. "Institutes for advanced study have played a notable role in the development of universities and sciences," she says in the article. Padberg also addresses the future challenges of these research centers.

With regard to Latin America, the researcher has reinforced that the institutes have a "special responsibility" concerning the political and social development of their countries, democracy, and the mediation between science and society. When highlighting the IEA-USP as the largest and oldest institute in the region, Padberg cited the intention outlined in its foundation, in 1986, to be an area of academic and intellectual freedom. "With the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazilian universities were looking for a new beginning and endeavored to develop international relations in academia," she wrote.

Managing director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University since 2008, Padberg has a background in history and biological anthropology. Her main research interests are related to interdisciplinarity and the development of universities and science.

By talking to directors and employees about the institutes' strategies, missions, and values, she has brought together aspects related to their functioning and autonomy in relation to the universities where they are based, in addition to their contribution to research. "Institutes for advanced study have played a notable role in the development of universities and sciences," she says in the article. Padberg also addresses the future challenges of these research centers.

With regard to Latin America, the researcher has reinforced that the institutes have a "special responsibility" concerning the political and social development of their countries, democracy, and the mediation between science and society. When highlighting the IEA-USP as the largest and oldest institute in the region, Padberg cited the intention outlined in its foundation, in 1986, to be an area of academic and intellectual freedom. "With the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazilian universities were looking for a new beginning and endeavored to develop international relations in academia," she wrote.

The regulation of the electoral process, signed by the Director of the IEA, Martin Grossmann, has been published in the "Official Gazette of the State of São Paulo".

Changes

This election is a milestone in the history of the Institute, since it will be the first one under the new criteria approved by the University Council. The new rules have introduced profound changes in the electoral process (read more about it), valuing the development of management programmes, the harmony between the Director and the Deputy Director in their execution, and making the process of choosing the IEA leaders more democratic by creating a broad electoral college which will decide who will be elected directly.

The electoral college is made up of the following categories:

• current and former members of the IEA's Board;
• the president of the Institute's Research Committee;
• former directors and deputy directors of the IEA;
• directors of faculties and research units at USP, and representatives of their congregations in the University Council.

Before, the Director and Deputy Director were chosen at different times by the University's President from a triple list voted by the Institute's Board.

An electoral commission has been established to coordinate the entire process, not only taking care of the administrative aspects of the election (registration, election and counting), but also acting in its disclosure, in identifying potential candidates and encouraging them to apply.

The five members of the commission are:

• João Steiner, astrophysicist, professor at the USP's Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG) and former director of the IEA;
• Luiz Bevilacqua, engineer, emeritus professor from the COPPE-UFRJ, former president of the UFABC and former president of the Brazilian Space Agency;
• Mayana Zatz, geneticist and professor at the USP's Institute of Biosciences (IB), where she coordinates the Centre for Research on the Human Genome and Stem Cells (CEGH-CEL);
• Regina P. Markus, pharmacologist, professor at the USP's Institute of Biosciences (IB) and member of the IEA's Board;
• Sérgio Adorno, sociologist, director of the USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and coordinator of the Center for the Study on Violence (NEV).

'The IEA has grown, is alive and now occupies the space it deserves,' said USP's President Marco Antonio Zago at the inauguration ceremony of the Institute's new headquarters, on January 18. He and the other speakers of the event have emphasized the distinctive feature of the IEA: a meeting place for researchers from the various areas of knowledge and a channel for the University-society interaction.

The new headquarters are located in the space where the University Council, the General Secretariat and some bodies of the President's Office previously functioned. With an area that is 170% larger than the space currently occupied by the IEA, the site has been totally refurbished to host the Institute.

Infrastructure

If the Institute used to have facilities for 15 researchers, an event room for 50 people and a meeting room for a dozen researchers, it can now host 40 researchers simultaneously and organize meetings, seminars and conferences for 120 people in the IEA Auditorium (former University Council room) or for 60 people in the Alfredo Bosi Room, named in honor of the only professor to be part of the Institute since its inception. The new academic infrastructure is supplemented by five meeting rooms, three for 12 people and two for five researchers.

Rooms can host up to 40 researchers simultaneously

Cognition and Ethics

Bosi, who considers the IEA his 'second academic home,' said that by integrating the first composition of the Board in 1987 he realized the vocation of the Institute to be 'a space to approach the people that the geography of the campus had dispersed.' He has developed his entire teaching career at the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH).

He recalled the 'democratic' discussions on the process of Brazil's re-democratization within the Board in the early years of the Institute. 'Studying these issues was a way to pay off academia's debt to society and contribute to reducing inequalities.'

President Antonio Zago during the ceremony

For him, to discuss public policies in areas such as education, health, environment and energy alongside the debate on scientific boundaries is the key to the mission of the Institute, since it allows 'dedication to cognition and ethics, truth and the common good.'

Saldiva thanked Goldemberg 'for the vision of creating the IEA' and Bosi 'for perhaps being the person who most embodies the spirit of the Institute, with this link between cognition and ethics.' He also thanked former director Martin Grossmann 'for having started the fight for the IEA to leave a corridor and find a suitable space for its activities.'

Commenting on the president's commitment to the new space of the IEA, Saldiva said that this is the first time that the Institute, in its 31-year history, can count on headquarters that, 'besides representing an area increase, represent something that dignifies USP.'

For Saldiva, the existence of the IEA 'presupposes the idea of exercising an attitude of coexistence, as if the former Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Sciences at downtown São Paulo was resurfacing.' That was a place where there was close contact between researchers of the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities.

Alfredo Bosi Room

Profile

'The IEA currently gathers 400 researchers, has increased its production, has an impact journal and obtained national and international funds,' commented the director, who sees the Institute as a 'channel of porosity with society, something very important for USP at a moment when the country needs to hear proposals from the University, which should be part of the solution to the problems.

Linamara Rizzo Battistella stressed the importance of the IEA at a time when 'we are seeing public policies dilute.' José Renato Nalini, who was an adviser at the Institute before assuming the State Secretary of Education, said he had the compliments of Governor Geraldo Alckmin, 'who has great appreciation for the IEA, as demonstrated by the fact that Martin Grossmann was the only new member appointed to the State Board of Education.'

Nalini argued that the IEA should devote itself even more to the problems of public primary education, since 'there is a risk of deepening inequalities between young people with fewer opportunities and those with access to elite private schools.'

Vocation

Like Bosi and Saldiva, Goldemberg has also emphasized the vocation of the IEA to be a place of approaching people. 'When the Institute was created, the Professors' Club also came to be. It was very difficult to talk to people due to the differentiated geography of USP in relation to more compact universities such as Princeton.'

Area for the Board of Directors and the academic, administrative and communication staff

'I consider this new space appropriate for the IEA,' said the president of FAPESP. 'Intellectuals can work anywhere, but to make people interact, the place needs to be pleasant, stimulating.'

At the end of the ceremony, USP's president said that throughout his administration he was concerned with living spaces, inserting the new headquarters of the IEA among the actions undertaken for this purpose, such as the creation of Milton Santos Square.

For him, the IEA and the Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB), whose new headquarters were inaugurated on the same day, represent what 'the University has of most important and noble.' He made this point by highlighting IEB's collection and studies on culture, history and Brazilian literature, and the 'central role of the IEA in bringing people and USP closer to society.'

Zago said that a triangle of coexistence, interdisciplinarity and interaction with society is now being set up, with one of the vertices being the Brasiliana Guita and Jose Mindlin Library together with the IEB, as both share the same premises, and the others being the IEA and Inova USP Research and Innovation Center, inaugurated in December.

Photos: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP | Graphic perspectives: Arthur Santos Francisco/SEF-USP

Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski took office as a member of the institution's board

The promotion of high-level interdisciplinary research advances in Latin America with the creation of the Espacio Universitario de Estudios Avanzados at the University of Costa Rica. The institution held commemorative seminars between September 5 and 7. Professor Guilherme Ary Plonski, deputy director of the IEA-USP, took office as a member of the institution's board.

Plonski gave the lecture 'Advanced studies: an international perspective', in which he showed a bit of the 30-year history of the IEA and the context for the creation of the network University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS). Formed in 2010 by advanced research institutes based in universities all around the world, the network discusses the production of knowledge and conducts joint scientific activities with the presence of prominent researchers.

"I see this invitation as a way to bring to the University of Costa Rica the lessons of a little more experienced institute, as there are few of its kind in Latin America. The concept of a center of advanced studies with interdisciplinary research characteristics in which students, professors and researchers feel comfortable to dare border issues is something important for Latin America to become increasingly included in the map of the international networks of advanced studies," said the deputy director.

Plonski points out that the UBIAS network has a large concentration of institutes in Europe, is gaining visibility in Asia and showing some growth in Africa. The United States have different mechanisms of fostering border research, he says. "With this, I realize that we are institutionally responsible for stimulating this model in which we believe, in order to reproduce it with its own characteristics in Latin America, since we are brothers and can assist with 30 years of experience of the IEA-USP."

The Espacio Universitario de Estudios Avanzados began to be formatted about a year ago. The new center has academic proposals similar to other institutes of the kind. But it will not operate independently, since it is linked to the dean of research at the University of Costa Rica.

On the other hand, due to the structure of research financing in Costa Rica, the center shall be free to launch tenders and calls for research and collaboration, unlike what happens in Brazil, where notices and processes for research funding are launched by agencies of development.

The meeting will bring together Brazilian, American and European researchers to discuss texts that will provide subsidies to the update of the theoretical framework for empirical comparative analysis of emerging countries considering the global post-crisis scenario of 2008. The seminar's exhibitors and panelists will particularly address the modernization of the theoretical framework that supports the analysis of the current and prospective status of Brazil in the international system.

The seminar is an initiative of the IEA-USP, USP's International Relations Institute (IRI) and USP's Center for Public Policy Research (NUPPs) in partnership with Princeton University's Niehaus Center for Globalization and Government. Both universities have been running an academic and scientific cooperation programme.

The event will be broadcast live on the web. (see the full programme of the event here)