Post-doctoral Fellowship in History of Education

We hereby announce the opening of a Post-Doctorate Fellow position at the School of Education of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. The post is linked to the São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP Thematic Project entitled KNOWLEDGES AND PRACTICES AT THE BORDERS: for a transnational history of education (1810-...) coordinated by Diana Gonçalves Vidal. Within the main project we welcome applications for the development of the subproject The NEF in the South American circuit.

This opening comes in the wake of ongoing (Process 2016/070 24-0) and concluded (Process 2015/06456-1) investigations supported by FAPESP, in continuity to and widening the spectrum of analyses carried out. In the Process sponsored in 2015 through a Research Grant, the purpose was to problem untie is the disconnection between NEF and Brazil, demonstrating that in spite of the fact that the Brazilian Section was created only in 1942, the exchange was previous to that and could be traced back to the early 1920s. Apart from that, it was possible to problematize the historiography of Brazilian education in which NEF was always referred to as the Ligue Internationale Pour L'Education Nouvelle (LIEN), which hid from view the relations established with the Anglophone context, circumscribing the interpretations to the Francophone branch of NEF, understood as independent (VIDAL & RABELO, 2017 e 2018).

The Process sponsored since 2016 through a Post-doc Fellowship to Rafaela Rabelo has tried to demonstrate the associations between Brazil and the NEF, insisting on the Anglophone branch, and bringing to light a documentation hitherto unknown not only to the Brazilian educational historiography, but also to the international historiography on education. In this sense, the Progressive Education Association and the subjects associated to it emerge as a privilege object of analysis. It is in this scenario that we can situate the creation of the Section in 1942, as one of the results of the trip by Carleton Washburne to countries in South America, among them Brazil. Under this scope of the discoveries issuing from these investigations, the references to South America are a constant, such as the one made by Adolphe Ferrière in 1930 as delegate of the NEF, and that by Washburne in 1942.
Whereas on the first reference there is abundant bibliography, associated only to the Francophone branch, as previously said, on the second reference there are scarcely any evidences left. On the other hand, in the NEF archives in London, news of the South American Sections can be located, and it is very likely that the same will occur in local archives, given that the NEF established Sections in Argentina in 1928, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay in 1930, Uruguay in 1931, and Bolivia in 1936; and in these countries educational journals associated to the network were created. It is with a focus on this South American secret that we propose the opening of a Post-doc Fellow position associated to this Thematic Project.

The research will benefit from the assessments already made by Rafaela Rabelo in the London and Uruguay archives, but will face the challenge of widening the empirical basis locating documentation kept in the archives of Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia and Bolivia. Since Argentina, from among all these countries, is the one with the most extensive documentary systematization, concentrated in the Biblioteca del Maestro, this should be the first country to be visited. Contacts with the remaining countries are being established so as to make possible the investigate that will have as its objectives:
- To locate documents about the trips by Ad Ferrière and Washburne to South America; - To locate educational journals created or associated by the South American countries to NEF;
- To identify educational trips made by South American educators within the relations established by NEF with South American countries;
- To reconstruct through networks methodology the webs constituted and the pedagogical products and initiatives issuing from them or related to them.

Application information:
Candidates to this position should contact Prof Diana Gonçalves Vidal through her email (dvidal@usp.br) communicating their wish to take part in the selection process, and attaching the following documentation:
a) Curriculum Vitae of the candidate (Lattes CV);
b) Curriculum Summary of the candidate (please see instructions on www.fapesp.br/sumula);
c) An introduction letter containing the reasons for the interest in developing the subproject The NEF in the South American circuit;
d) Two letters of reference from professors from the areas in which the candidate has worked;

Selection criteria:
a) Analysis of curriculum pertaining academic formation directed at the conduction of the research project, and of the Curriculum Summary, regarding the intellectual production in the area of the present position;
b) Analysis of the introduction letter;
c) Interview and arguing on the initial workplan (to occur on 13 and 14 November 2019);
d) Written exam of proficiency in the Spanish language on our theme related to the Post-doc Project.