Two degrees. Two different ways of looking at the world.
My undergraduate and graduate research explored very different subjects, but both were rooted in a similar question: how large systems shape outcomes — and how people, institutions, and countries respond to them.
Sociology
Graduate research focused on surveillance, sousveillance, protest, digital media, power, and citizen-led forms of documentation. The thesis used Brazilian activist collective Mídia NINJA as an empirical case study.
Citizen Sousveillance: The Use of Sousveillance in Protests. The Case of Mídia NINJA
This thesis proposes the concept of Citizen Sousveillance to describe the protective and transformative role that bottom-up observation can play during protests. Through the case of Mídia NINJA, the research identifies five dimensions: nonviolence, raw reality, counternarrative, archival, and virtual participation.
Abstract
The power dynamics of the gaze have been examined from different perspectives, from the use of surveillance for safety purposes and the monitoring of citizens, to concepts that study how alternative gazes impact society and its actors. One of these alternative gazes has been described as sousveillance (Mann, 1998). While surveillance refers to watching from above, sousveillance is its direct opposite, watching from below. Based on this dynamic, and using a Brazilian group of activists that practices sousveillance as a case study, this thesis proposes a new term called Citizen Sousveillance. This term highlights the particular, protective role that sousveillance can play in protest contexts, preventing police brutality and other forms of injustice, as well as its capacity to change the reality of protest as a whole. Citizen Sousveillance encompasses five dimensions: a nonviolence dimension, a raw reality dimension, a counternarrative dimension, an archival dimension, and a virtual dimension. These dimensions — and the concept of Citizen Sousveillance itself — were discerned through an empirically grounded analysis of the activities of the Brazilian activist group Mídia NINJA. The group's social media work, together with interviews with five members, forms the case study around which the thesis is organized.
International Relations
Undergraduate research examined the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism, with particular attention to Brazil, India, and China as major developing countries participating in CDM projects.
Kyoto Protocol, Clean Development Mechanisms, and the Role of Brazil, India, and China
The monograph examined the Kyoto Protocol's emissions-reduction framework and the role of the Clean Development Mechanism as a tool through which developing countries could voluntarily contribute to greenhouse-gas reduction. Particular attention was given to Brazil, India, and China and their prominence in approved CDM projects.
Abstract
The Kyoto Protocol emerged from the 1997 Conference of the Parties with the primary objective of establishing stricter commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Alongside the Protocol, which introduced several mechanisms to provide incentives and rewards to countries meeting their reduction targets, came the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), consisting of projects designed to remove or reduce greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. It is important to note that not all countries were assigned mandatory targets. These obligations applied to developed countries, designated by the Protocol as Annex I Parties. Other developing countries, classified as Non-Annex I Parties, could contribute voluntarily to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil, India, and China — three of the world's largest countries — fall within this category. These three countries became the world's largest producers of and investors in CDM projects, accounting for more than 50% of all projects approved by the United Nations body responsible for the mechanism. Debate over the viability and legitimacy of these projects, and of the Kyoto Protocol as a whole, remained highly relevant, particularly because the first period for assessing the program's effectiveness ran from 2008 to 2012. At the time of the study, the future of the framework remained uncertain and dependent on the results achieved during this initial period.
Research changed how I approach problems.
International Relations trained me to think across borders, institutions, policy, economics, and competing interests. Sociology added another layer: how power, communication, culture, identity, and human behaviour shape those systems in practice. Those perspectives later became useful far beyond academia — in international market development, stakeholder management, leadership, strategy, and now in the way I approach AI and technology transformation.