In this episode, Prof. Patricia Farias discusses the internationalisation of higher education, and the EDI work of Brazil’s first multicultural university.
(Recording duration 23 minutes 11 seconds.)
Conversation Transcript
LC: Hello. I’m Louise Campbell and you’re listening to EDI Conversations from the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law at the University of Dundee. Today I’m speaking with Professor Patricia Farias, a visiting professor who was with us in session 2023/24. Patricia, tell us a little bit about yourself.
PF: Well, I am an anthropologist and a former journalist. I graduated in journalism, and then I pursued my Masters and my Doctorate, coming to the Anthropology area and now I am a full professor of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and my main issues as a researcher and as a teacher is gender issues, ethnic racial relations and territoriality. And I work and publish in these area of knowledge. My new interest in my studies is about the internationalisation of higher education.
I travelled to Dundee to initiate partnership because my university is very interested in the internationalisation of higher education, as well as my country and my government, so we find that the UK is a very good place to study, to make some research together and to strengthen our connections and our partnerships. So I think that in the Education area we have some issues that we can share solutions or some plans to work together in on them. So I think that it’s the most important thing that I travelled for, to reach this this this kind of support, I think. Human support and researcher support, and we can work together. We can broaden our sights and our visions of the world, beyond the barriers and the distance.
LC: You undertook research at the Federal University for Latin American Integration known as UNILA. Can you tell us about UNILA as an institution? What are the values and purposes that shape its ethos?
PF: I went to UNILA to study and analyse how can exist a university, which asserts and affirms itself as a multicultural university? What is it? How can we study, learn and practise as teachers and as researchers, how can we learn about this kind of scenario? So UNILA is unique university but it shares the common plan of my Government to internationalise, focusing in the Latin America area, higher education. It was built in 2010 and its mission is to receive not only Brazilian students, but Latin American students as well. 50% of the students would be Brazilian, but 50% would be for other countries of Latin America. And the university is set to teach the language. To Brazilian, students, it teaches Spanish and Spanish language spoken people in Latin America, the university taught the Brazilian language, so it’s a bilingual university. And this is a step forward to the integration of the region, because in Latin America we had these two kinds of colonisation, the Spanish one and the Portuguese one. So in Brazil we are customer that we are not Latin American, we have nothing in common with our neighbours in the region, so this university focuses on connections that we have throughout the history of domination, violence and colonisation of European metropoles, so it’s a very challenging process and I think that it’s very interesting so I was attracted to study how come this really occurs? What is in fact happening there? My focus on this research was on the students. So I would like to know at this time how the students, from so different countries, but there there’s some points in common, how they are received in Brazil and how they cope with this diversity within the university. So I interviewed 28 students from various countries and from different genders and different racial identifications. And one of my interests is about the factors of race and gender can be an issue for the students. So I wonder if the studies international students were facing racism or were facing xenophobia or transphobia or misogyny. So I think that is one of my interests, to investigate how can we approach these problems? How can we understand more about kind of problems in the in the scope of the universities, in the scope of education? Because when we talk about internationalisation, it’s like everyone is in the same status in the same place. We think about diversity but in fact, we think about homogeneity of this kind of students and there are so many differences. So we have to overcome this kind of narrow vision of the internationalisation of higher education, to focus more on the human material that we have in our hands, and how can we share our concerns and our visions? How can we receive their experiences and react to them in a good way? To construct a safe environment for education. I think that it’s more my concern as a teacher, as a citizen and well as a partner of Scotland, of the UK.
LC: Are there also dimensions of this work within Brazil? Is there pockets of different populations? Different groups? Perhaps indigenous groups that are integral to what’s going on with UNILA?
PF: The state has emphasised these kind of inequalities in education that exist for a long time in my country; the inequalities, of race, of ethnicities and of persons with disabilities. And in the field of education, we have a gap among the white students and [between] the upper classes and the lower classes in the university for example. And then the state has been addressing this problem with laws, some kind of initiatives, To keep some vacancies in the universities for these people; Black people, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, in order to attract this public to the university and make universities more diverse and more Brazilian, as Brazil is a country of diversity and the university was not. So it’s a discrepancy – we have to work on it. And then now after, I don’t know, a decade or two of this kind of effort, we can say that the university is more diverse. But we have also many issues. We still have discrepancies. We still have some kind of gaps. And we are facing an interesting scenario because we have these people in the university, but then what? How can we manage to access the full course of the university to them? To be sure that they carry on this course until the end. That they will not drop out, that they will not give up due to racism, due to sexism, due to an environment that is hostile and not welcoming. So now we are on this in this path, we are in this challenge. How can we move forward and how can we assured that this diversity is not only a discourse, only a beautiful phrase.
LC: What were the findings of your research? What did you discover through the process of looking into the experiences of the students?
PF: During the the process I found out that in fact racism is a concern, especially for Haitian students but also for Brazilian students who are black. They suffered several types of violence, in the university, but not only in the university, outside in the city, because the city is not prepared to receive this amount of students and there are citizens that don’t understand the importance of this kind of diversity. And there are many women as well that really related to violence and were facing violence in the public sphere, in the supermarkets, at the university, in the streets. So women, mainly, told me that they are very disappointed with this kind of hostile environment, in the bars or pubs or restaurants or the streets, so I discovered that there is resistance and this resistance sometimes developed in[to] violence against the students, and this affected more people who are not white and people who are not men. This makes me more concerned about the environment that we are offering to our students, especially the international ones, but also on the other hand, the diversity, the lure of diversity, the attraction and the happiness that this diversity brought to these students are so powerful that they overcame this hostile environment, because they believed that it’s kind of magic. A magical project of integrity. It’s of an integration in its full sense of the word. It’s a kind of respect to the differences, but that they all carry something in common, that is this this wish to know about each other, to coexist, to more than coexist, to work together to get more information to act [their] lives in this diversity to swim and dive in the diversity in their life. So it’s very interesting and beautiful to see, how can they carry with them, even when they leave the university and they have these courses finished, but they carried with them this sense, this feeling that diversity is a good thing. We can learn. We can grow. We can flourish. And we can work in this diversity. They want to work with international relations or in another country but bringing Brazil to another country, they carry this experience of exchange also to work with refugees, to work with embassies; all kinds of wishes.
LC: Can you tell us who the thinkers are that help you when you are considering these very complex ideas about identity and society and inclusion?
Well, I’m an anthropologist and in this way I searched for a theoretical point of view in this area of the knowledge, and I found very useful the theory of Victor Turner, who actually is a Scottish academic from Glasgow. He studied transition to one status from another status within society. So the initiation rituals that every society has. He developed this. He indicates that there are three steps in this process, this ritual process to achieve another position collectively in a society. So we had the first step, which is your position in this, in this society in this. But now this society that you are part of, then you entered to an area where are several others other persons learning something. Learning a religion, learning some skills. And then all these people are in this second step, which he called the ‘communitas’ or community step, where everyone is equal in the sense that everyone is learning there. Everyone knows nothing. But everyone wants to learn something. And then we had the third step, which is the returning to the society of origin with another status. You have now completed your task, completed your ritual, and then you are a full initiate of some religion, you are a pastor. You are a priest. You are a graduate student. I use this this tool to understand that a university is a kind of ritual of initiation, initiation of an adult life for young people. Not only for them, but mainly for young people. To learn a skill. To learn how to live. Learn how to deal with the reality of being self-made in this society. I understood the university at this point from this point of view. In this experience I tried to understand what these students of UNILA are learning. What is the task that they are accomplishing? But also that they have in common this process, but they have also diversity among them. How can they cope? I found that the project of an integration all of them share this kind of purpose, to learn and exchange information. But also they have issues because of violence and it’s a dubious process that has this, this level of equality in the in the goal, in the plan. They share, a plan, they share a wish, but this wish is offered halfway by the university, by the city and by the country so. Some of them, ask themselves, what can I do with all I learned in the university if the environment in my society is so, so cruel? I don’t know how can I apply this marvellous knowledge that I learned. I know that it’s useful but they don’t care about this.
LC: When you were with us in Dundee, did you manage to pursue any research during that time, or was it mainly about disseminating the work you had already done?
PF: In the UK I had another kind of experience of research in the internationalisation of higher education, which is very, very interesting, which is how about the foreigner, who teaches in the UK? So I interviewed 10 professionals; lecturers, teachers, researchers, from different countries such as Bulgaria, India, Pakistan, Ukrainian and Brazilian as well, and I asked him how they cope with the two experiences of learning and teaching, so how they incorporated their experiences in their home countries in this new context. Do they introduce new bibliography from these countries? Do they attract people to learn in the UK – students? Do they maintain partnerships with the members of universities of their home countries? In sum, do they contribute in another way to an informal internationalisation of the higher education. What were the connections that they maintained with their home countries? It was very interesting because most of them had this purpose in their minds, in some way, in their examples that they give in the classes that they give, to propose new disciplines. And writing articles with members of their former universities in their home countries, they are willing to develop these connections, but they are not supported in this mission. So they do this, mainly in informal ways, voluntarily, not officially, in their spare time. And I think it’s very interesting because the governments can profit so much more, if they if they could see this movement and support in some level this spontaneous will to share in the educational area because people are doing things with their experience for a larger field of information and exchange and diversity acknowledgement and diversity understanding with their experiences. So it’s another kind of internationalisation of higher education issue. And people there in your home country, they are very welcoming to my research, so I’m very grateful.
LC: What did you find most interesting about your time in Scotland?
PF: Well, I had a very good, happy and interesting time in Scotland. Besides the beauty of the country, I managed to meet enthusiastic people. Some of them, like you, are new friends. I’m still very excited with the possibilities of partnerships. I think that my experience in Scotland opened for me so many other possibilities of exciting work. My comfort zone vanished. And it’s so, so good. Thank you. Thank you very much and goodbye, my friends in Scotland.
