University of São Paulo, Brazil
Thesis: L.S. Vygotsky’s Critique: Between Aesthetics, Publicistic and Psychology
Research supervisor: Prof. Bruno Barretto Gomide

Since 2010 I have been working on a research topic that has so far taken the form of a doctoral thesis (presented in 2015) and of an ongoing post-doctoral research at the Russian Studies program of University of São Paulo.
The initial motivation to this research was the will to combine the spheres of art (especially literature) and psychology. In this sense, the work of Lev Vygotsky appeared to me as deeply original and inspirational though still little explored in the Brazilian context. By applying Vygotsky’s methodological approach, as it is presented in Psychology of art, I have written a master’s dissertation that provided an analysis of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
While studying Vygotsky’s Psychology of art, I came across the existence of several other writings that had been hidden in obscure local publications and did not have
any contemporary circulation or scholarly reception. This has made the primary focus of my research turn to the uncovering of this production and the attempt to grasp the striking differences – in terms of methodology, influences and the very understanding of art – between Vygotsky’s first academic paper (the essay on Hamlet, 1915) and his thesis Psychology of art (1925), the only works I had knowledge of thus far.
Since then it has been my objective to investigate this ten-year-span (1915-1925) by surveying and collecting Vygotsky’s original production over this period and trying to grasp continuities and discontinuities of his ideas and methods within this period. I am particularly interested in understanding how Vygotsky develops his notion of “critic”, as an intellectual that moves between the realms of psychology, aesthetic and publicistic.
Although I have, so far, focused on the corpus produced in the aforementioned period, I am convinced that the reflections on this material can be extrapolated by making connections with the productions of “later Vygotsky”. In this sense, the ISCAR Summer University is most certainly a privileged opportunity to be in contact with scholars who have other research interests and backgrounds. Not only can this project offer some new insights for the study of “Vygotsky, the critic”, it will most certainly profit from the input of researches of “Vygotsky, the  scientist/psychologist”.
I believe the ISCAR Summer University 2019 can be an extremely productive moment for exchange with the international community of Vygotskyan scholars. Seeing that this edition proposes the turning to the original texts as one of the priorities in the international psychological studies, I believe the project I have been developing can be of particular interest and offer a contribution to the debates that will take place in the event.