Description of PPGSS

In 2020 the Graduate Program in Social Work at UFPE (PPGSS-UFPE) turned 41 year old at the Master's level and 21 years old at the Doctoral level, as an in-person academic modality. Until 2016, PPGSS was the only Doctoral course in Social Work in the Northeast region of Brazil. The beginning of the current quadrennium refers to a  maturity season reached by the Program, since for the second time, it continuously reaches the concept 6 of CAPES, consolidating itself as a local, regional, national and international reference.

 

Currently, the “Social Work, Social Movements and Social Rights” area is the only program of study offered by PPGSS, which branches six (6) research areas, as shown below. The relationship between the program of study and the research areas covered by the program is supported by ethical-political and theoretical-methodological principles that are part of the conceptual, cultural and ethical framework of Brazilian Social Work, reaffirmed in 2014 in a document by the scientific association in the field - ABEPSS - under the title ABEPSS's Contribution which goal is to strengthen Postgraduate Programs in Social Work in Brazil (ABEPSS, 2014).

The PPGSS research areas are: 1) State, Social Policies and Social Work Action; 2) Social Work, Labor and Social Issues; 3) Social Work, Political Action and Collective Subjects; 4) Social Work, Ethics and Human Rights; 5) Contemporary Capitalism, Agrarian, Urban and Environmental Issues; 6) Social Relations of Gender, Generation, Race/Ethnicity and Sexualities.

The articulation, adherence and updating of the program of study  and research areas seeks to unveil expressions of social issues, deepened in the current scenario. The social issue is central to the professional intervention and the production of knowledge of Social Work, persistent in current social relations with deepening marks that are intensified in the context of cyclical crisis of capital and accentuated with the ultra-neoliberal policy, adopted by the Brazilian State. This policy is expressed through ideopolitical, socioeconomic, legal, cultural and gender elements that have impacted the State reduction, whose effects express the dismantling of social public policies, reduction and suppression of working classes’ rights and poor social segments.

Furthermore, the articulation and adherence between the ¿¿programs of study and the research areas involve issues related to the training of personnel as well as planning, operationalization, evaluation and monitoring of social policies, while dialoguing with related areas.

The PPGSS currently has 10 tenured professors and 3 collaborators and is starting an accreditation process for permanent professors in 2021. Such process, which should have started in 2020, was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and resources cuts in public universities, considering the context of capital and political crisis in the country, which have complicated the recomposition of federal universities’ faculty, restricting research resources and  deepening the precariousness of teaching work.

In the last four-year evaluation of CAPES (2017-2020), the PPGSS completed a DINTER with the Raimundo Sá Institute, in Picos/PI, through which it awarded 13 PhDs, therefore contributing to Piauí, one of the poorest states in the country, to increase the number of doctors, especially in country/remote areas of Piauí. Dr. Evandro Alberto de Sousa, currently the Chancellor of UESPI –, as well as the head chef of the Department of Social Services at UFPI – Dr. Iracilda Alves Braga. DINTER's PhDs are linked to public and private universities in the Northeast, and to federal institutes, expressing an important element of the social insertion of the PPGSS.

 

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At the end of 2017, CAPES launched the Institutional Internationalization Program, through the CAPES/PrInt Notice (Notice 41/2017), aimed at the presentation of Internationalization Projects.

The exercise ended with UFPE preparing to set up a specific commission and to  launch, in 2018, the Internal Notice of Internationalization. With the national launch of the CAPES/PrInt Notice, UFPE competed and included all projects from qualified programs. In the human and social area, three programs qualified to compete and were articulated in the institutional proposal, entitled “State and Society in Global Contemporaneity: inequality and development dynamics”. Sociology included 3 projects; meanwhile the Political Science course contributed with 1 project and Social Work participated with 1 project.

The Collegiate of the Graduate Program in Social Work decided to submit a collective proposal that involved all the permanent professors of the Program, who participated in its preparation, consisting of 6 thematic research areas, aggregating 22 partners from international universities and research centers from South Africa, Mozambique, Spain, Mexico, Italy and Portugal. The Project is associated with the program of study and the program's research areas, which contributed to expand the range of objects of study and knowledge production.

The title of the PPGSS project is “DEVELOPMENT AND INEQUALITIES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: Suppression of rights and sociopolitical implications in the life and work of peripheral populations”, which addresses the topics: a) Democracy, Inequalities and Deprivation of Rights (Dr. Ana Cristina Brito Arcoverde, Dr. Helena Lúcia Augusto Chaves, Cristina Maria Pinto Albuquerque (UC/Portugal), Michel Messu (Université Paris Descartes- Sorbonne Paris Cité); b) Human Rights and Inequalities (Dr. Maria Alexandra Mustafá, Dr. Roberto Cipriani (Roma Tre) , Dr. Claudio Tognonato (Roma Tre), Dr. Annamaria Campanini (Milan-Bicocca University) c) Peripheral Capitalist Development. Social, political and environmental impacts and conflicts (Dr. Marco Mondaini (UFPE), Dr.Maria das Graças e Silva (UFPE), Dr. Guillermo Folladori (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas), Dr. Colin Darch (University of Cape Town), Dr. Isabel Casimiro (Universidad Eduardo Mondlane); d) Labor and Migration (Dr. Ana Elizabete Mota (UFPE), Dr. Angela Santana do Amaral (UFPE), Dr. Juliane Feix Peruzzo (UFPE), Dr. Francisco Javier Moreno Fuentes (CSIC), Dr. Eloísa del Pino Matute (CSIC), Dr. Luis Moreno Fernández (CSIC), Dr. Pablo López Calle (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Dr. Paloma Moré Corral (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Dr. Inés Calzada (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Dr. Pau Marí-Klose (Universidad de Zaragoza), Dr. Ana Arriba González de Durana (Universidad de Alcalá); e) Social Struggles, Women's Movements and Confronting Inequalities (Dr. Ana Cristina de Souza Vieira, Dr. Monica Rodrigues Costa, Dr. Jeremy Seekings (University of Cape Town), Dr. Solange Rocha (Associate Researcher/University of Cape Town), Dr. Asha George (University of Western Cape), Dr. Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro (Eduardo Mondlane University).); F) Housing and Migration (Dr. Rosa Maria Cortês de Lima, Dr.Maria da Conceição Pereira Ramos (University of Porto), Dr. Natália Ramos (Open University of Lisbon).

The approval of the project strengthened the Program's internationalization horizons. Resources around R$1,018,176.00 were confirmed for funding, international and national tickets, sandwich scholarships for doctoral students, scholarships for visitors abroad and work missions. Project development began in 2019 with the possibility of extension in 2022.

In 2019 the PPGSS received two visiting professors, Dr. Gibrán-Martinez, from CSIC, Spain, and Dr. Martin Cortés, from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, conducting seminars, mini-courses, monitoring students. The arrival of a recent doctor was also approved, in the Young Talent modality, Dr. Sébastien Antoine, who started activities at the end of 2019, in the GET research group, but had to return to his country, Belgium, when the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization. He returned to Brazil during one of the lockdown breaks and, in August, began courses related to 2020.1 period. His scholarship as a Young Talent was renewed for the period of 2021.1, when he taught the course “Labor in Contemporary”. However, the Coronavirus pandemic - Covid-19, strongly influenced the actions scheduled for 2020.

In 2021, a seminar was held coordinated by Dr. Ana Cristina Brito Arcoverde, in partnership with Dr. Cristina Albuquerque, from the University of Coimbra, and Dr. Michel Messu, from the Université Paris-Descartes. The video is available on our webpage.