Presentation of the Graduate Program in Sociology (PPGS) to foreign students

Introduction

The Graduate Program in Sociology (PPGS) is based at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) of the University of São Paulo (USP). The PPGS offers master's and doctoral courses and welcomes students from all over Brazil and abroad. Between 1971 and 2024, the PPGS graduated several masters and doctors. Its teaching staff is mainly made up of professors in the field of Sociology who also work on the undergraduate course in Social Sciences. Retired professors and guests from other units of the University of São Paulo and abroad also take part in the postgraduate program. These professors research topics include: sociological theory, religion, work, trade unionism, gender, inequalities, leisure and tourism, cities, race, family, violence, epistemology, education, culture, technology, among others.
Admission to the master's and doctoral programs is by selection process, the criteria for which are defined in notices published annually. The Graduate Program in Sociology has been recognized by CAPES as a program of excellence since the evaluation was instituted. The breadth of the program is expressed in the seven lines of research, which we will describe below.

Description

Since its creation in 1971, the Graduate Program in Sociology has been a reference and excellence for research in the area, seeking to reconcile the qualification of the national debate around studies on the Brazilian reality, especially, but also internationally in an integrated way with the debates on hot topics in sociology in the world, as well as with the sociological theory that is being produced today. All the Brazilian professors and researchers have a standard curriculum which is public and can be consulted on the website: https://lattes.cnpq.br/
The Postgraduate Program in Sociology stands out for its training of masters and doctors who are able to work in higher education, as well as researchers trained for research and professional work in various other sectors of the job market: public administration, the third sector, teaching in basic education and the private sector. Historically, the Postgraduate Program in Sociology has been responsible for qualifying teachers and researchers who today work in national and international universities.
The aim of the PPGS is to maintain its place in the development of cutting-edge research at an international level, welcoming a variety of projects, preserving the theoretical and thematic diversity that is healthy for Sociology and respecting the scientific rigor of the discipline.

Lines of Research

The Graduate Program in Sociology is organized into seven lines of research:
1. Sociology: theory and history
The line of research includes studies in the history of the explanatory canons of sociology, in the sociology of science, including from a comparative perspective, and the analysis of the models of interpretation that are central to the intelligibility of sociological reason. This reflexive stance seeks to restore the lines of force postulated by the inventors of the discipline in the 19th-20th centuries, revitalized by the mentors of contemporary sociology, in the conspicuous strands of disciplinary practices at the center and on the periphery. Since this heuristic reflexivity is transversal to the other lines of research in our program, the area of theory and history of sociology feeds on research whose achievement has supported the innovative gestation of analytical and conceptual resources derived from working with empirical materials. For this reason, research into the history of special sociologies and their theoretical foundations is an integral part of this line of research. 
Teaching staff: Alexandre Massella, Edison Bertoncelo, Laurindo Minhoto, Leopoldo Waizbort, Luiz Jackson, Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda, Maria Helena Oliva Augusto, Paula Marcelino and Ricardo Musse.

2. Culture and symbolic power 
This line of research investigates the relationships between the symbolic universe, social representations, intellectual, scientific and artistic production, education and religion and the spheres of institutional and social power. The work carried out explores the various ways in which culture is inscribed within social life and political institutions, especially the state, covering a wide range of themes: the arts, literature, Brazilian social thought, cinema, the social history of intellectuals, scientists and specialists, the cultural industry, popular artistic expressions, education and religious affiliations. The empirical universe is explored according to various theoretical-methodological approaches, configuring itself both as a social world to be known and as expressive forms to be interpreted from a sociological point of view.
Teaching staff: Ana Paula Hey, Fernando Pinheiro, Leopoldo Waizbort, Luiz Jackson, Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda, Murillo Marschner, Paulo Menezes, Sylvia Garcia, Reginaldo Prandi and Sergio Miceli.

3. Dynamics of class, race, gender and generation 
The social groups we call "class", "race", "gender" and "generation" are formed from social and historical processes that define collective identities. From which theoretical elaborations can we use these names as analytical concepts in sociology? These concepts are essential for analyzing macro-social phenomena, such as racism, anti-Semitism, machismo, misogyny and LGBTphobia, to name but a few. This line is dedicated to developing analyses of collective subjects in specific social configurations, under certain structures of opportunity and in particular political conjunctures. It seeks to understand how, among the multiple identities that mark the social position of individuals, some of them are highlighted for social interaction, for the definition of positions in the labor market, for the production of social and symbolic boundaries, for political struggle and for the definition of inequalities and social hierarchies. The transdisciplinary dialog, as well as the use of multiple and combined methodological strategies, are the keynote of the current studies. 
Teaching staff: Antônio Sergio Guimarães, Edison Bertoncelo, Helena Hirata, Marília Moschkovich, Murillo Marschner, Nadya Guimarães, Márcia Lima and Maria Helena Oliva Augusto.

4. Economy, work and society
The connections between economy and society form the common ground for the research in this line, which is divided into four strands. The first focuses on the study of market regulation institutions and public policies aimed at the development of science, technology and innovation, with the aim of contributing to the actions of government and research institutions to raise Brazil's position in the international context. The second is part of the international debate on the “future of work”, addressing the impacts of new digital technologies on markets and labor relations. The third is in line with the contemporary debate on the “crisis of social reproduction”, focusing on the care economy. The fourth is in the field of economic sociology, with studies on the social construction of markets. Transdisciplinary in nature, it explores different theoretical and methodological perspectives, working at the frontiers of sociology with various humanities disciplines and in dialog with the exact and life sciences.
Teaching staff: Álvaro A. Comin, André Vereta-Nahoum, Glauco Arbix, Iram Rodrigues, Leonardo Mello e Silva, Nadya Guimarães, Paula Marcelino and Ruy Braga.

5. State, Politics and Collective Actions 
The line of research brings together studies on the relations of cooperation and conflict between society and the state, which define decision-making and the direction of public policies, investigating the disputes between various social actors and their forms of mobilization and protest, representation of interests and expression of symbolic identities. Economic, political and cultural elites, labor unions and associations, third sector entities, religious groups, social movements, scientific associations, government commissions, private foundations are examples of social actors studied in the research that makes up this line. The line encompasses case studies on Brazil, comparisons between countries and regions, and analysis of transnational dynamics and interactions, in contemporary conjunctures and long-term processes. 
Teaching staff: Álvaro A. Comin; Ana Paula Hey, Glauco Arbix, Sylvia Garcia, Ricardo Mariano and Sedi Hirano.

6. Cities: interactions, inequalities and socio-spatial (i)mobilities
This line of research brings together studies on the socio-spatial dimension of life in cities, based on three main axes. The first deals with the rules of (non)everyday social interaction in public, private and/or intimate places, whether face-to-face or virtual, which are explored in terms of what their temporalities and spatialities, at different historical moments, reveal about the (re)production of urban space. The second investigates the forms and dynamics of urban conflict, with its networks of actors and socio-urban mediations, which express, at the same time as they constitute, the practices and repertoires of struggles for/within space and urban illegalisms (with an emphasis on the organization and management of informal/illegal markets). The third addresses the disputes surrounding the flows of bodies, things, images and information on various scales of space (from local to transnational) and time (work and non-work), referring to regimes of mobility and the fixed infrastructures that support, enhance or block them. Theoretical references come from urban sociology, the sociology of everyday life, the sociology of conflict, the sociology of space and the sociology of mobility, always in interdisciplinary dialog, especially with anthropology, geography, architecture, urbanism and history. 
Teaching staff: Bianca Freire-Medeiros, Fraya Frehse, Nadya Guimarães and Vera Telles.

7. Violence, rights and citizenship
This line brings together research whose common core is the approach to violence in its multiple dimensions and effects on social life. This general purpose includes: the polysemic treatment of the concept as well as its phenomenology, types and modalities of action; images, representations and meanings of violence; characterization of institutions that exercise violence and punishment, police, criminal justice and prisons. The line contemplates different methodologies of observation, analysis and interpretation, favoring contemporary perspectives, and explores the emergence of a new paradigm of violence associated with global changes, at four levels - international system, national states, societal mutations and contemporary individualism - which alter perceptions and representations and even explanatory theories in the field of social sciences.
Teaching staff: Ângela Alonso, Bruna Gisi, Laurindo Minhoto, Marcos Alvarez and Sergio Adorno.

Course structure

The PPGS offers courses at Master's and Doctorate level - in this case, for those who hold a Master's degree.
A new set of regulations will come into force from 2025 due to changes in the structure of postgraduate studies. So far, the structure of the courses can be summarized as follows.
Total time (to complete the courses): 
► Master's Degree - 30 (thirty) months 
► Doctorate - 48 (forty-eight) months
► Direct Doctorate - 66 (sixty-six) months
 
Required credits:
► Master's degree - 104 (one hundred and four) credit units, of which 32 (thirty-two) obtained in subjects and 72 (seventy-two) obtained in the dissertation
► Doctorate (for holders of a Master's degree) - 184 (one hundred and eighty-four) credit units, of which 24 (twenty-four) are obtained in subjects and 160 (one hundred and sixty) are obtained in the thesis
► Direct Doctorate (without obtaining a Master's degree) - 216 (two hundred and sixteen) credit units, of which 56 (fifty-six) are obtained in subjects and 160 (one hundred and sixty) are obtained in the thesis

Complementary Activities:
As a requirement for maintaining the student's link to the program, in the postgraduate courses in Sociology, as provided for in the PPGS regulations, postgraduates are required to participate in complementary activities (courses, mini-courses, lectures, seminars, conferences, discussion tables, study groups, etc.) duly certified, amounting to 8 hours per semester in the first three semesters for master's students and 8 hours per semester in the first four semesters for doctoral students.

Admission - selection process

The selection exam for the Master's and Doctorate of the Graduate Program in Sociology takes place annually; in general, applications begin in the last months of the first semester and the exams take place during the second semester. Like the structure of the courses, the selection process will also undergo changes for entry in 2026. It currently consists of three stages and is conducted by two boards, one for masters and one for doctorates, made up of professors from the postgraduate program:

Test of Theoretical Knowledge in Sociology (master's only): 
The aim of the test of theoretical knowledge in sociology is to assess the candidate's academic and intellectual background, their reading repertoire in the field, as well as their ability to analyze, interpret and write texts.       

 

Research project (master's and doctorate): 
The aim of the research project analysis is to find out if the candidate is able to formulate a research question, if they know the bibliography related to the chosen subject, if they can discuss it critically, if they can formulate research hypotheses and, finally, if they know how to organize the project itself, in all its fundamental parts.

 

Interview on the Curriculum and Research Project (master's and doctorate):
After passing the written test and the project evaluation stage, the candidate will undergo an interview, conducted by the evaluation board.
Detailed information on the selection process can be found in each year's selection process notice on the Sociology Graduate Program website.

 

Foreign Language Proficiency:
The Postgraduate Program in Sociology requires proficiency in one foreign language (from among the following: English, Spanish, French, German and Italian) for Brazilian candidates for the master's degree and two languages, one of which is English, for the doctorate. Proficiency in the master's degree can be used for the doctorate. 
Foreign applicants must present proficiency in Portuguese for the master's degree and English for the doctorate.
For specific rules on foreign language proficiency, see the “Discentes regulares" (regular students) tab and the announcement of the selection process for entry in the desired year.

Scholarships

The Graduate Program in Sociology offers a certain number of scholarships each year, mainly from two research agencies, Capes and CNPq, as well as, occasionally, from internal university distributions. The scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic merit and the socio-economic situation of the candidates and are regulated by a specific notice issued at the same time as the selection process. 
PPGS students can also obtain scholarships from other sources on their own initiative. 
The program is financed by the following sponsoring agencies:
CAPES: Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel
CNPq: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [National Council for Scientific and Technological Development]
FAPESP: Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo [The São Paulo State Research Foundation].

Affirmative action

The selection process for the Graduate Program in Sociology adheres to an affirmative action policy for self-declared black, brown or indigenous (PPI) candidates. 20% of the places open each year in the master's and doctoral programs are earmarked for these people. This policy is detailed in the notice for the annual selection process.

Postgraduate Program coordination and secretariat

PPGS Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Paula Marcelino

Secretariat: 
Gustavo Mascarenhas: socioccp@usp.br
Érica Rocha: sociousp@usp.br
Telephone: +55 11 3091-4505 and +55 11 3091-3724

International Cooperation

Information on agreements, exchanges and international relations at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences can be found on the website of the International Cooperation Commission: https://ccint.fflch.usp.br/