Brazil is among the few countries where inequality levels have declined in the past decades, and income distribution has become fairer since re-democratisation in 1985. Yet, Brazilian society continues to be deeply unequal. From divided cities and uneven access to health care and education to racial and gender discrimination, millions of Brazilians struggle in their daily lives with several challenges that make upward social mobility too distant of a dream.

The Global South Research Group at the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, King’s Brazil Institute, and the Centre of Racial Studies at Insper Institute of Education and Research invite researchers, students, and everyone interested in learning more about Brazil to an expert panel on the difficulties as well as opportunities that the country faces to tackle inequalities today.

Date and time: 6 November, 14.00-15.00 (London), 11.00-12.00 (Brasília)

Panel

Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos is the Director of King’s Brazil Institute and Senior Lecturer in Brazilian and Latin American Studies at King’s College London. Before joining King’s, Andreza was a Lecturer at the University of Oxford and Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme. She is the author of the book The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil (Rowman & Littlefield) and co-editor of Urban Transformations and Public Health in the Emergent City and African Cities and Collaborative Futures, both with Manchester University Press.

Alysson Portella is a researcher at Insper’s Centre of Racial Studies. At the Centre, he was one of the creators of the Folha Index for Racial Balance (Índice Folha de Equilíbrio Racial in Portugues), which measures racial inequalities in Brazil and is published by Folha de São Paulo, the country’s prime newspaper. Alysson has also been a visiting doctoral researcher at the United Nations University and at Columbia University. He is the co-author, with Michael França, of the recently launched book Números da Discriminação Racial: Desenvolvimento Humano, Equidade e Políticas Públicas (Editora Jandira).

Chair: Daniel H. Alves, PhD Candidate in Political Economy at King’s College London, Graduate Assistant at the Global South Research Group, Department of Political Economy, and Associate at King’s Brazil Institute.