Objectives

From the perspective of research – when analysing and understanding nature, society, and space – and from the perspective of education – when covering theories and methodologies of geographical science – the Postgraduate Programme in Geography provides to train professionals in a high academic and scientific qualification, who are capable of acting in a critical, committed and involved manner in different spaces.

The Programme aims at an academic training that produces knowledge, meeting the society's demands in relation to (1) the production of space and the natural dynamics and (2) the production of urban-regional space in order to contribute to the discussions on the analytical concepts and categories of Geography for understanding the social and/or natural processes, and nature-society relationships, expressed in urban and rural spaces, taking into account different analytical scales and approaches, and seeking the satisfy theoretical-methodological plurality.

This aspiration is also related to the objective of requiring the analysis on nature, society, and space from the education perspective, planned by geographical education.

In connection with the pedagogical and social commitment of UFFS about being a popular public university, the Programme also aims to strengthen the interrelation with an undergraduate degree in Geography and related areas, covering the training and qualification of professionals to work on producing knowledge.

This will occur by means of education and research activities that will optimise university extension activities, including – in addition to the researcher and professor training of higher education – the complementary professor training of basic education, managers and technician of public administration, members of social movements and unions and professionals of related areas in the private sector. Besides, it is intended to cooperate with actions that strengthen the institutional integration, promoting the production of academic knowledge in/of the local and regional space and contributing to the inland expansion of the access to the highest levels of formal education.

Based on the foregoing objectives, it is understood that the former student of the Programme will be able to:

- Analyse the reality from theoretical and methodological instruments of Geography in relation to the social and natural dynamics of the space;

- Be a researcher, working as a production agent of the space;

- Do fieldwork in a systematised manner combined with the specialties of its area of training and professional activities;

- Collect, systematise, produce and construe data and information in the scope of theoretical and empirical research;

- Establish relationships with areas of knowledge and popular knowledge;

- Identify and analyse realities in different spatial scales, seeking to identify the issues of production in the urban-regional space, production of space and natural dynamics; and think about alternatives for its overcoming;

- Be integrated into teams of interdisciplinary work, building mechanisms to overcome the issues identified;

- In the scope of the teaching practice, improve the theoretical-methodological and instrumental references that allow critical and potentially propositional reflections.

- Have a position in an ethical and committed way in its professional area of activity.

This profile is desirable in the scope of training offered by UFFS and the regional demands because they will be professionals who, once trained, may be involved in the discovery, description, knowledge, explanation, and construction of natural and artificial specialties about the life on Earth.

Based on these skills, the former students may help in building compassion among the peoples from the perspective of more active and more qualified actions in the basic education, research institutions and social movements that work in the region.