The Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (PPGAS-USP), founded in 1972, offers master's and doctoral courses, standing out for training professionals who can work in educational and research institutions in Brazil and abroad as well as in areas involving public policies, civil society organizations, and social movements. PPGAS has the mission of training individuals in different fields of action with distinct skills to do research, to understand and give visibility to different people, collectives, ways of acting and thinking, and to produce knowledge in an ethical manner, committed to social justice.
As a well-established and recognized Graduate Program both in the country and abroad, our main goals are to continue the mission of training new generations of anthropologists, producing knowledge that has local, regional, national, and international impact, as well as contributing to the achievement of rights and social justice through the actions of our faculty, students, and alumni, in favor of a more equitable and just society. Over the years, the PPGAS has trained professionals who work in numerous educational institutions in the country and abroad, in government, public administration, the third sector, and international organizations. This is work that necessarily has a significant social impact in Brazil and other countries.
The PPGAS-USP was one of the first Graduate Programs at the University of São Paulo to implement affirmative action policies for Black, Indigenous, transgender individuals, and people with disabilities. The Program conducts annual selection processes and has welcomed master's and doctoral students from different regions allowing it to promote diverse training each year, facing the challenges of an inclusive and democratic university. The PPGAS also has a diverse faculty with professionals at different stages of their academic careers, distributed across six research lines: 1) Amerindian Studies; 2) African and Afro-diasporic Studies; 3) Anthropology of History/History of Anthropology; 4) Cities, Spaces, and Mobilities; 5) Expressive Forms and Regimes of Knowledge; 6) Power and Difference.