Internationalization
The PPGS’s strategy of operating in international research and teaching networks has been implemented over time. The first CAPES/COFECUB agreement (established between 1997 and 2000), entitled Cultural Heritage, Memory, and Imagination, coordinated by Ismael Pordeus, established a comparative reflection on memory and the imaginary in Brazil and France. The agreement—a pioneering one in the Northeast—between UFC and Université Lyon II was renewed for two periods, recording intellectual exchanges embodied in missions, doctoral programs, colloquia, and books.
Subsequently, the 2005–2007 CAPES GRICES call for proposals facilitated an exchange with the Institute of Social Sciences of Lisbon through the project entitled: Globalization, Cultural Identities, and Social Conflicts: Brazil and Portugal in a Comparative Perspective, coordinated by Irlys Alencar F. Barreira. The network facilitated intellectual exchanges embodied in missions, doctoral programs, postdoctoral programs, colloquia, articles, and books.
Other capillary forms of coordination between Graduate Programs were implemented through the Institutional Internationalization Project (PRINT/CAPES). The PRINT proposal was implemented at the PPGS/UFC in an interdisciplinary manner, including the Graduate Program in Water Resources and the Graduate Program in Sociology, through the project entitled “Water Resource Resilience in a Changing World – Climate and Society.” The network, coordinated by Assis Filho, a professor in the Water Resources Engineering Program, and César Barreira, a professor in the Graduate Program in Sociology, has been generating exchanges between different knowledge structures, involving comparative research, doctoral training, and the publication of books and articles.
The PPGS has also been included in the Internationalization Incentive Calls sponsored by the Ceará Foundation for Scientific and Technological Development (FUNCAP). Under FUNCAP/CAPES Call for Proposals 04/2017, the PPGS developed the project “Strategies for Strengthening Graduate Studies in Sociology: Research Networks and Internationalization,” involving a group of PPGS faculty and students and partner colleagues from universities in the United States, France, Mexico, and Portugal. Under Funcap-Internationalization Call for Proposals 08/2023, currently underway, the PPGS is developing the project “Sociological Research in International Networks: Knowledge Production, Training of Excellence, and Circulation of Social Technologies,” also involving partnerships between students and faculty from the Program and partners abroad at universities in the aforementioned countries.
From 2023 to 2024, the PPGS-UFC conducted multicenter research on elites in Latin America, a Fulbright-funded project. Professor Geísa Mattos and colleagues from the American universities of Lehigh, Florida, and Yale have been conducting academic exchanges at the PPGS, which involve graduate students in the US and Fortaleza, in a research project that aims to understand, comparatively, social inequalities in Latin American cities through the study of elites and the everyday ways in which they maintain their economic, political, cultural, and social power in cities. The project was scheduled to continue in 2025, but due to a decision by the Trump administration, Fulbright had to discontinue the project.
Currently, the PPGS, led by Professor Andréa Borges Leão, is part of the team for the Capes Cofecub project “Franco-Brazilian Sociology of Intellectuals and Culture,” coordinated by Lidiane Soares Rodrigues (UFSCar).
