About the Program
Graduate Program in Philosophy
The Graduate Program in Philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (PPGFil-UFSC), currently evaluated with the maximum score (7) by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), was created in 1997 for the purpose of developing and encouraging the study of Philosophy and cutting-edge research in this area in Santa Catarina and in the Southern Region. Today, the Program has a consolidated excellence and it is recognized as one of the best and most important in the area in Brazil.
Its mission is to produce excellent philosophical research and to train qualified human resources in Philosophy, so that through research and teaching they can contribute both to the development of the discipline and to the development of a democratically stable society. In this mission, the vision of PPGFil-UFSC is based on the incessant pursuit of academic excellence in both teaching and research, the internationalization of its activities, while being inclusive and supportive.
The Program offers courses at the Master and Doctoral levels, as well as Postdoctoral Research. It receives students with a degree in Philosophy, but also students from other areas of knowledge. Over the years, PPGFil has received foreign students, both through an annual selection process and through projects and inter-institutional agreements, such as with the Organization of American States (OAS), with the Radboud Universiteit (Nijmegen, Netherlands) and with other partnerships that guarantee scholarships for incoming students in a continuous flow, which has allowed students from countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to take graduate courses in Philosophy in Brazil.
Similarly, the Program is part of a subproject CAPES-PrInt (Institutional Program for Internationalization) of UFSC, which, in addition to the agreements of cooperation with foreign Universities around the world, allows research internships in abroad for both students and teachers. There is faculty participation and leadership in various research networks and formal funded partnerships, such as the International Network on Quantum Mechanics, Project O3: Our Brain, Ourselves, Our World: A Global Research Consortium in Neuroscience Ethics, CAPES-COFECUB.
With its three areas of concentration, which are, (i) Ethics and Political Philosophy, (ii) Epistemology and Logic and (iii) Ontology, the PPGFil-UFSC presents the following academic structure: 1) Coordination, composed by the coordinator (a) and by the sub coordinator; 2) The Program´s Council, composed by the Coordination, by professors representing each area of concentration, by a Master student representative and a Doctorate student representative; 3) Full Collegiate, composed by the Coordination, by all professors accredited as permanent, by two Master´s students representatives and by three Doctorate´s students representatives. There is also a Scholarship Committee composed by the Coordination, a teaching representative and a student representative.
The average number of professors who work in the Program varies between 30 and 35. They are highly qualified professors with an expressive bibliographical production, who work in the categories of permanent, collaborator and visiting professor. The classes offered by PPGFil, which include disciplines taught in a foreign language and/or shared with foreign professors, follow the University calendar and they are offered on a semester basis, which generally correspond to the months of March-June (1st semester) and August- December (2nd semester).
PPGFil-UFSC edits and maintains three scientific journals that stand out in the national philosophical community and have a relevant internationalization profile: Principia: an international journal of epistemology (Qualis A1), ethic@ – an international journal for moral philosophy (Qualis A2 ), and Peri, the Program’s student magazine (Qualis A4).
Dissertations and thesis coming from the PPGFIL-UFSC have been awarded and recognized for their excellence by funding agencies such as CAPES and CNPq, or by Associations such as ANPOF (National Association of Graduate Studies in Philosophy). In addition, graduate thesis or postdoctoral research results have been published as books by renowned Brazilian and foreign publishers.
