The Brazilian Research and Studies Center (BRaS) is an inter and transdisciplinary research and publication platform based at the University of Würzburg, Germany. BRaS brings together scholars from Brazil and abroad engaged with political, social, economic, and cultural developments on Brazil to promote scientific exchange and knowledge transfer.

BRaS was founded in 2019 by scholars of different disciplines from Brazilian and European universities, who shared a growing concern about Brazil’s increasingly difficult social sciences research situation over the past years. With BRaS, they sought a way to establish a communication channel and bring scientifically informed knowledge about recent developments in Brazil to an international audience. In 2020, the online platform started with a Blog and an article series about the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil. By now, BRaS counts on the collaboration of scholars from nine universities. It is still growing and extending its activities.

The BRaS focuses on promoting and disseminating inter and transdisciplinary research on Brazil from all areas of social sciences. The goal is to provide researchers an accessible platform for developing joint projects and publishing their research. Furthermore, as BRaS advocates scientific knowledge exchange, it aims at bringing social science research to a broader public, especially in Europe.

Drawing on the BRaS’ mission of furthering social science research on Brazil and knowledge exchange, its objectives are the following:

• To promote social science research about Brazil on the international level;

• To connect Brazilian scholars and researchers from different countries and social science branches;

• To develop innovative ways of bringing scientific knowledge to a broader, non-scientific audience;

• To establish itself as a center of scientific excellence on Brazilian studies.

Brazil’s political, social, and economic development has utmost importance throughout the world. Relevant events in Brazil become news rapidly outside the country. Moreover, the Brazilian diversity in various fronts creates room for wide-ranging academic research on the country either by Brazilian researchers or international ones. For more information on our research, please see our Research Groups