Hello!

Hi!

If you came here to know how am I, I thank you and say I'm fine. There are 10 hours before I get into the airplane to Spain.

I'll be flying by TAP, from Rio to Lisbon, and then to Barcelona. ETA in Barcelona is 11:55AM local time (6:55AM Rio time). On the 7th, my day of arrival, I'll have a quick session in the College which we will be having classes.

But you may be asking yourself: what is this all about?

When I was in College, I started to dedicate myself to the study of population movement, a.k.a. migration. My focus was the international migration, which I found to be very interesting and exciting, especially if you believe there are some rights people should not be denied anyhow. Those rights I learned to be fundamental rights for pretty much all nations, and that's why they are also called Human Rights.

My final project in College was challenging. I had two different tutors, while normally we would have only one. At the same time, I had to invite a professor from another University to be truly evaluated, as my professors did not feel confident to analyze my job. I decided to deny already stablished concepts of migration, calling attention that those theories are created to underestimate the presence and the changes the migrants cause in their place of destiny. In fact, besides studying Geography, my final project had no maps, no graphs, no tables. It was all based on theory and my guts in saying the main theory used in most of all migration studies is pointless (I said no to Ravenstein and yes to Bauman).

As my interest was in migration, I started to participate in online discussions too. In the beginning of the year I received a message that a group of scholars would develop a course in July, in the city of Tarragona. The objective of the course was declared in its name: Decolonizing Knowledge. When I read the whole prospect of the course, I felt I had to go. It won't be easy: the discussions are supposedly all philosophical, as the core of the debates are epistemological. Some of the authors we will be discussing I have read before, which helped a little. But there are so many areas of discussions that I'm going to confess I haven't finished reading it all. However, I don't believe I will be doing anything else there than studying... most of the time.

I also plan to have a weekend "break" in Madrid. It's not everyday that you can go to Spain, right?

Keep tuned here, and I'll be posting my ideas while I'm there... And let's rethink together "which way is up".

Cheers!