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The Graduate Program in Social Policy is linked to the Department of Social Work (DSE) and the Center for Human Sciences, Letters and Arts of the Federal University of Viçosa (CCH-UFV), adding the Master and Doctorate courses. The Master, implemented in 1992, was the first stricto sense course of the Center of Human Sciences (CCH/UFV). The approval of the doctorate on 12/12/2013 and beginning of its activities in August 2014, strengthened the center and expanded the possibilities of growth of research in the areas of applied human and social sciences.

In its three decades of existence, the program has been consolidating itself in its mission of training teachers, researchers and qualified professionals to work in teaching, research and extension in the area of social policy, family and relations with society, following an educational policy identified with the problems and issues that affect family and society. It establishes as a vision of the future to be a national and international reference in the academic formation of professionals who research and work in the area of social policy, family and relations with society.

The program is structured in two lines of research: 1st) “Family, Space and Society”, and 2nd) “work, social issue and social policy”. All research developed in PPGED is framed by these research guidelines, in order to allow the researcher in training to deepen his theoretical and methodological knowledge to interpret and understand economic, social and cultural processes, examining his interactions in the dimension of the sphere public and private society.

From the defense of the first dissertation on April 20, 1995 until September 2024, the program formed 369 master's and 43 -PhD researchers, with a knowledge production that reveals the specificities of families and the dynamics of the territories where they are inserted considering the multiple social vulnerabilities to which they are subjected, permeated by political, economic and social factors, tangent by reasons of race/ethnicity, class, gender and generation. PPGED has also developed agreements and actions with Latin America to subsidize the analysis, formulation and implementation of public policies, programs, projects and actions that enhance the social rights, needs and demands of subjects and families in Brazil and America Latin.

Goals

The general objective of the UFV Graduate Program in Social Policy is to train qualified human resources for the teaching, research and production of knowledge in the field of social policy, family and social relations, aiming to enhance analyzes on social and material reproduction of the living conditions of the subjects and their families in society (line 1), as well as the critical reflection on state and social policies from a perspective of social totality in capitalist dynamics (line 2). Both analytical perspectives expand the possibilities of analysis regarding formulation, planning, management, evaluation and monitoring of social policies in different areas, such as social security, health, education, social assistance, food safety, housing, etc20.

The specific objectives are:

Train professionals for the exercise of teaching;
Foster the production and diffusion of knowledge about social policy at local, regional, national and international levels;
Contribute to the understanding of the expressions of the “social question” in different contexts; training professionals to work in the activities of formulation, management, analysis and control of social policies;
Deepen knowledge to confront emerging challenges that demand professional intervention in social policies; establish technical-scientific exchanges with educational and research institutions in the area of social policy and the like, local, regional, national and international levels;
Contribute to the knowledge and elaboration of social policy proposals, especially to the Zona da Mata Minas Gerais, region with low rate of human development. Promote articulation strategies between postgraduate, undergraduate and high school, aiming to expand and improve the quality of Scientific productions between students and teachers, as well as the formation of new researchers.