Project details
Year: 2017 – 2023
Role: Coordinator
Description: The Law, Discrimination and Diversity Group is a university extension initiative affiliated with the University of São Paulo Law School (USP). The group seeks to advance more inclusive and socially engaged legal education by integrating questions of discrimination, diversity, and structural inequality into law school curricula. Drawing on critical pedagogy and anti-discrimination approaches, DDD examines how legal education can challenge rather than reproduce inequalities related to race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and other dimensions of social identity.
The group’s activities focus on rethinking legal teaching practices, developing innovative pedagogical approaches, and encouraging students to become active participants in the production of knowledge. Through collective discussions, educational activities, and the development of teaching resources, DDD promotes critical reflection on classroom dynamics and the role of legal education in confronting discrimination.
In 2017, I joined the group’s coordination team, alongside Professor Conrado Hübner Mendes and colleagues Luiza Andrade Correa and Clio Nudel Radomysler, contributing to its efforts to promote diversity, equality, and pedagogical innovation in legal education.
Impact: Between 2017 and 2023, more than 120 undergraduate and graduate students joined the group and developed tools to teach and learn about anti-discrimination.
In this period, DDD developed educational resources and initiatives to promote critical, inclusive, and non-discriminatory legal education. Among its main outputs was the booklet “Que tal transformar o ensino jurídico? Princípios para uma pedagogia crítica e não discriminatória” (How About Transforming Legal Education? Principles for a Critical and Non-Discriminatory Pedagogy), which offers guidance for rethinking legal teaching practices. The group also produced documentaries addressing Indigenous rights and affirmative action policies at the University of São Paulo Law School, developed teaching notes and case studies on discrimination for use across the law curriculum, and co-designed and taught an undergraduate course on Law and Discrimination at the University of São Paulo. Regular meetings with students, teaching assistants, and professors encouraged reflection on classroom dynamics and the adoption of more inclusive teaching methods.
DDD also contributed to academic debate and public engagement through presentations of research papers and posters at national conferences, including the National Meeting on Legal Anthropology (ENADIR) and the Empirical Legal Research Meeting (EPED). The group organised and co-organised numerous events addressing critical pedagogy, popular education, racial quotas, student diversity, and belonging in higher education. These included discussions on emancipatory education during the COVID-19 pandemic, discrimination in legal education, and the experiences of students admitted through affirmative action. Through its publications, audiovisual productions, teaching activities, and public discussions, DDD helped bring anti-discrimination perspectives into legal education, fostering dialogue between students, educators, researchers, and civil society about the institutional and pedagogical changes needed to make law schools more inclusive.
Selected outputs and events
1. Booklet — Que tal transformar o ensino jurídico? Princípios para uma pedagogia crítica e não discriminatória
How About Transforming Legal Education? Principles for a Critical and Non-Discriminatory Pedagogy
Access the publication on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348311281_QUE_TAL_TRANSFORMAR_O_ENSINO_JURIDICO_Principios_para_uma_pedagogia_critica_e_nao_discriminatoria
2. Undergraduate course — Law and Discrimination
A course co-designed and taught by DDD members.
Course syllabus: https://uspdigital.usp.br/jupiterweb/obterDisciplina?sgldis=DES0319&verdis=1
3. Documentary on Indigenous rights
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bogCWHlml7A
4. Documentary on affirmative action and racial quotas at USP Law School
Watch the YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQpug5Eb7jVKzsjYXL1XmgYX61ML_UP2E
5. Event: Construir um ensino libertador em tempos de pandemia: uma utopia possível? (Building Emancipatory Education During the Pandemic: A Possible Utopia?)
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJFdFUw7l90
6. Cotas na FDUSP: Um Diálogo sobre Pertencimento (Racial Quotas at USP Law School: A Dialogue on Belonging)
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOdItJNK6Mk