On 11 November 2026, at 18:00 Brasília time (21:00 GMT), Felipe Szabzon, a postdoctoral researcher at IMS-UERJ and researcher on the project Transitions: The Ethics and Politics of Psychiatric Deinstitutionalisation in South America, will present preliminary findings from his research on the history of psychiatric care in Brazil. The seminar will feature opening remarks by Professor Rossano Cabral Lima and a closing discussion with Professor Jurandir Freire Costa.
Parallels drawn between the present and the 1920s and 1930s have renewed interest in a period of intense struggles over Brazil’s national identity and future. How did psychiatry participate in these struggles? What forms of care and society did its projects seek to create? The seminar will revisit psychiatric thought during this period, exploring differences and tensions between proposals from the Brazilian League for Mental Hygiene, based in Rio de Janeiro, and those developed in Pernambuco by the group around Ulysses Pernambucano. This historical exploration invites reflection on the relationships between care, politics and visions of society, taking contemporary concerns as a starting point for discussion.
The event is jointly organised by the Transitions Project (King’s College London) and the Hesio Cordeiro Institute of Social Medicine at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IMS-UERJ), with support from the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on the Sociology of Mental Health and Illness (ISA RC49).
Date: 11 November 2026
Time: 18:00 Brasília time / 21:00 GMT
Format: Online via Zoom. Free to attend.
Language: The presentation will be in Portuguese, with English and Spanish subtitles available.
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