Gray F. Kidd, co-instructor of a Bass Connections Education and Human Development research team, is working with the Global Brazil community to bring 17 Brazilian students, faculty, and staff to Durham for a weeklong collaboration from March 21-27, 2017. 17 collaborators from the Multidisciplinary Institute of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (IM/UFRRJ) will join their Duke counterparts to examine the impact of increased access to higher education in the Baixada Fluminense, an economically and racially marginalized urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro. Kidd, along with Professor John D. French, are working to put on a memorable culminating event in the form of a daylong conference on March 27, 2017.
The March 21-27 visit by the Brazilian team continues the collaboration with the IM/UFRRJ that began in June 2016, when Kidd, French, Katya Wesolowski (Cultural Anthropology), and Stephanie Reist (PhD candidate in Romance Studies) led five undergraduates in three weeks of intensive field research in the Baixada Fluminense. The team conducted 46 recorded interviews under the direction of Kidd and Reist and learned more about the geography, history, economics, and culture of the Rio lowlands through site visits and guest talks.
From 2014 to 2016, Kidd served as Graduate Coordinator of the Global Brazil Humanities Lab of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, where he organized two conferences for the Global Brazil community in addition to workshops, musical performances, and invited talks. Since August 2016, he has served as a co-instructor for the Bass Connections research seminar “The Cost of Opportunity.”
Duke Today on Duke in the Rio Lowlands
Featured Story in GIST, the Social Science Magazine of Duke University
Picture - *Kidd (bottom right in purple) with members of the Duke-IM/UFRRJ Research Team in Rio de Janeiro. June 2016
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