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The History of PPCIS

The Graduate Program in Social Sciences (PPCIS), linked to the Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science Departments of UERJ’s Social Sciences Institute (ICS), is an interdisciplinary program of teaching and research ranked as level 5 by CAPES. Created as a Master’s program in 1994 and then also as a PhD program in 1999, PPCIS has welcomed students from various academic backgrounds and regions of Brazil throughout the years. Since its foundation, the program’s signature has been the option for an interdisciplinary perspective, seeking the connection and dialogue between the three main areas that form the field of Social Sciences: Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science. This guideline encompasses teaching, research and extension activities, and it encourages and promotes the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

PPCIS’ academic project translates into an institutional picture which seeks to create an intellectually productive dialogue between the fields of knowledge in Social Sciences, without ignoring the rising and inevitable specialization observed throughout the last decades. The program wishes to provide a solid disciplinary education to its students, while also encouraging them to perceive and explore the resulting advantages of approaching the same issue through different fields of knowledge. Thus, PPCIS’ graduates obtain a Master’s or PhD diploma in Social Sciences, but, throughout their educational path, they may opt to focus in one of the disciplinary areas. At the same time, the curricular structure of the courses makes an effort to stimulate the dialogue between the different areas, promoting the variety of intellectual perspectives and the multitude of disciplinary points of view. As such, since its foundation, PPCIS has had as its main guideline the belief that the different areas of Social Sciences must intertwine, allowing for the creation and development of knowledge capable of understanding and questioning the social world in a more complex manner.

Throughout its existence, PPCIS has been reevaluated, always aiming for a better way to translate its interdisciplinary initiative into the academic practice. At this moment, it is structured in four research areas that gather faculty, students, research projects and other academic activities: 1) Arts, Image, Culture and Intellectuals in Social Sciences, 2) City, Religion and Resistance, 3) Family, Gender, Emotions and Generations, and 4) Citizenship, Violence, State and Public Policies. Each research area gathers experts from different disciplinary fields, in an effort to encourage collaborative work between faculty and students from different fields of knowledge. The program’s research areas have been academically acclaimed and acknowledged both nationally and internationally, securing exchange programs, agreements and partnerships with national and international researchers from important teaching and research institutions. Some examples of this acclaim are two projects funded by CAPES’ Internationalization Program (CAPES PRINT), hosted by PPCIS.

All faculty members are also active in the undergraduate course in Social Sciences of the Social Sciences Institute (ICS), offering courses on that level every semester. Furthermore, most of PPCIS’ faculty members offer extension activities through their affiliation with ICS’ laboratories, many of which also welcome as members colleagues from other teaching and research institutions, both Brazilian and from other countries.

In the field of scientific diffusion, PPCIS publishes “Interseções – Revista de Estudos Interdisciplinares”, a quarterly scientific journal which has as its purpose to disseminate articles, essays, conferences, dossiers, interviews and critiques based on the interdisciplinarity in Social Sciences. Its editorial line follows the program’s foundation purpose, receiving contributions from all three areas, as well as from other areas in the Humanities that establish dialogues with Social Sciences’ authors and concepts. The journal has been ranked as B1 by CAPES’ scientific journal ranking (CAPES WebQualis).

At this moment, PPCIS’ faculty has 22 professors and 10 collaborators.