Research Lines

Research Line 1: Development and Social Technologies

Technical and methodological studies that make it possible to construct tools for analysis, intervention and understanding of the natural and urban environment, human subjectivity, forms of work, management and production of urban populations and/or vulnerable rural areas. They include studies on natural resources, sustainable management, psychological aspects of vulnerability, family agriculture, work organization, social management and solidarity economy, with the purpose of subsidizing social visions and technology for the populations studied.

This line presupposes the academic involvement with the study groups, in a constant dialogue, with the purpose of thinking about their social reality, determinants and entrances, as well as possible ways of overcoming situations, providing the development of social technologies and focusing on generating integrated, sustainable and applied actions to various development sectors, in a local and regional sphere, such as environmental, educational, related to public policies and communities. In this perspective, popular knowledge, knowledge of daily practices are valued, such the ones which encourage participatory and collective social practices, producing and socializing knowledge that allows social construction and social development.

Research Line 2: Vulnerability and Regional Dynamics

Studies that aim to elucidate the demands, characteristics and potentials of vulnerable populations in urban and rural areas, in terms of spacial, historic, social, artistic and educational visions, all from a formal and non-formal point of view. The studies will have the population as common point of study, allowing a range of works that can subsidize public policies that can help with the reversal of human vulnerability and suffering, as well as interventions capable of affirming the construction of new narratives, historical-social identities and allowing the visualization of new socialities. It is understood that interdisciplinary research aimed at social vulnerability and the understanding of it, in the regional dynamics, allows to comprehend and implement actions that make it possible to overcome exclusion and the constitution of mechanisms that lead to the development of the region.