The Graduate Program in Psychology at the Fluminense Federal University (PPG Psicologia UFF) aims to:
a) Strengthen the Graduate Program of the Department of Psychology at the master’s and doctoral levels, for the training of high-level researchers in Psychology, both in the course concentration and related areas.
b) Continuously contribute to the training of Higher Education professors in the field of Psychology with high-level skills both in the area of concentration of the course and related areas.
c) Encourage rigor in the production of knowledge in specific domains of Psychology through the development of the two lines of research in the Program.
d) Provide permanent conditions for the transfer of knowledge to social sectors that need them through specialization, improvement and updating for professionals in Psychology and related areas.
e) Encourage research and integrate knowledge production with intervention in social reality.
f) Promote the social inclusion of the program, considering its contributions to the transformation of both society and the graduate system.
g) Promote the production of knowledge, its dissemination and exchange around the “Studies of Subjectivity”.
h) Promote national and international academic exchanges around the “Studies of Subjectivity”, especially in the areas of research, social inclusion and teaching.
i) Continuously contribute to the training of basic education teachers and other education professionals, aiming at continuing education in the course concentration area and related areas.
j) Contribute continuously to the training of various health care professionals (psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, nurses, doctors, among others) with a view to continuing education in the course concentration area and in related areas.
l) Contribute to the development of new epistemologies and technologies in the field of psychology, focused on education and health, from the interface with the knowledge of populations that have come to the University through affirmative action policies, such as black, indigenous people, trans and disabled people.
The presented objectives relate to the moment of creation of the PGP at UFF, but also to its development and transformation. In 1999, the Master’s course in Psychology was created as a result of the experience accumulated by the Psychology Department professors at UFF in their research groups and in the lato sensu graduate course. The creation of the Doctorate course, in 2008, resulted from the regional importance that our stricto sensu graduate degree had acquired. That is, the formation of masters in several locations beyond Niterói brought the demand for the improvement of trained human resources for the production of knowledge and for teaching Psychology in these same regions. Thus, our human resources training policy breaks local boundaries and asserts itself in the training of masters and doctors beyond Niterói. Thus, we can say that another principle of our graduate program is configured by the social impact given by the training of human resources, by the advancement of research with epistemological changes, and by their application, which has been taking place by the development of insertion programs in partnership with education and health institutions. Masters and PhDs from our program are involved in professional activities in the field of psychology, with emphasis on health care, as well as in higher education teaching in public and private institutions.
Another characteristic of our program is the problematization, in the field of research and practice in Psychology, of the so-called “disciplinary frontiers” and the intention to preserve objects of study that are clearly delimited and ontologically pre-constituted. Since no specialist can nowadays claim the privilege of being able to account for our complex social, cultural and political polyphony, we understand that the capacity for transdisciplinary circulation, permanently transforming the objects and subjects of research, is today a common heritage of all the sciences, a requirement that every scientist must meet. As a result, we intend to make the frontiers of psychology porous, connecting it with other knowledges and practices, a procedure that we consider decisive for the training of researchers and psychologists who allow themselves to be challenged by the questions opened throughout psychological practices in public institutions and others. We believe that this approach, present in the pedagogical project of our program, makes our courses sought after by psychology professionals as well as those from other areas. This is in line with UFF’s Institutional Development Plan (IDP) Institutional Development Plan UFF 2018-2022: “What will UFF’s tomorrow look like?” Decision CUV UFF 014/2018, published in BS No. 100, in 06/11/2018. Niterói, 2018, which affirms as one of UFF’s principles the redesign of the development of research and graduate studies in new formats, which, above all, are in line with interdisciplinarity. In our program, interdisciplinarity is given by the relationship with other fields of knowledge (philosophy, education, arts, linguistics), but also by the intersection of the central theme of our program – subjectivity – with questions about race, class, gender and disability studies. It is a transdisciplinary circulation, permanently transforming the objects, methods and subjects (in which we include the researchers) of research. This transdisciplinarity aspect that we are betting on contributes to the affirmative action policy, but is also contemplated by it. In our program, the affirmative action policy, created in 2016, in line with UFF’s IDP, has been transforming the public and also the methodologies and theoretical discussions. For us, this is our greatest innovation – the creation of new epistemologies in the field of psychology, which requires practices that are more in tune with the reality of the Brazilian population. This direction makes us affirm the affirmative action policy as a new principle of our program. The entry of the populations, through the affirmative action policy, includes discussions that take into account the experiences and knowledge of those who were historically objects of study. We also have social inclusion as one of the principles of UFF’s Graduate Program in Psychology, given the actions that have been established that, in response to their research, and to strengthen them, institute social technologies in serving different populations, making up what we usually call in the intervention “research program researching WITH populations” and, more recently, of grounded investigations, that is, territorialized, in which the research is not distinguished from the territory.
