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I have been educated in Brazil and the UK. I trained as a clinical social psychologist at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (PUC-RS), where I received my BSc, License (Licenciatura) and MSc degrees in Psychology. I lectured there until coming to the LSE in the early 90s to conduct research towards a PhD. I joined the Institute of Social Psychology in 1995 and since then the LSE has become my intellectual home.
I have been always intrigued and fascinated by how social and cultural contexts shape the types of being we are. Having grown up and spent my formative years in Brazil, a country marked by sharp social disparities and an amazing combination of peoples and cultures, I wanted to understand better how these contextual elements shape the psychology of individuals and communities. As most psychologists of my generation in Brazil I have been deeply concerned with the uses of psychology in social settings and with how psychology can contribute to alleviate social inequalities.
I spent the late 80s teaching at the Institute of Psychology of PUC-RS and working as a clinical social psychologist on primary mental health care with deprived communities and towards the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness. Working and researching in psychiatric settings and deprived communities increased my appreciation of the limitations of a purely traditional clinical approach as the answer to the urgent needs of excluded populations. I became interested in social and cultural psychology, convinced of the need for developing academic work towards a new psychology and never looked back.
Click here| to see more about the Museum of the Unconscious and scenes from the work towards the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness in Brazil (in Portuguese).
http://www.ccs.saude.gov.br/#|
Today I continue to work towards the development of a societal and cultural psychology and am convinced that psychology must occupy a firm place among the social sciences.The life of the mind is socially produced and historically situated.
Click here to know more about the public lecture series Psychology as Social Science.
I am co-editor of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology|, direct a book series on Contemporary Social Psychology for the Brazilian publishing house Vozes and sit in the editorial board of the European Journal of Social Psychology and Psicologia e Sociedade . I have held a professorial appointment at the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme and under the auspices of CNPq (Brazilian National Council for Science and Technology) teach regularly in Brazil as a Visiting Professor. I continue to have strong links with Brazil, both through my research and teaching, working closely with colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
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