Professor Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda, from FGV’s School of Social Sciences (FGV CPDOC), has been selected for the Brazil Visiting Fellowship program, by the University of Birmingham, with funding from the Rutherford Fellow Fund, to conduct research on the modernization process for football stadiums in England. The topic is connected to the public safety policies developed in the country over the past 30 years, in particular combating hooliganism, since the publication of the Taylor Report in 1989.

The study is based on the intensive monitoring of academic and public debate, in particular the one developed by the sports press, with updated literature devoted to the subject, comprising official documents, news sources and bibliographic references in the fields of sociology, anthropology and history. In addition to file research, the stay in the United Kingdom will include participant observation in English professional football to monitor the dynamics of relations between policing the stadiums and how fans travel on game days, considering the level of rivalry between clubs and the impacts of the new arena models established in the country since the 1990s.

Hollanda holds a PhD in Social History of Culture (PUC-RJ) and postdoc from Maison des Sciences de L’homme (Paris), and is the coordinator of the “MBA in Cultural Assets: Culture, Economics and Management”, offered by FGV in São Paulo. His main areas of interest include the social history of football and football fan associations; modernism and literary life in Brazil; Brazilian culture – criticism and interpretation; social thinking and intellectual history.

The Brazil Visiting Fellowship program aims to support the professional development of researchers at Brazilian universities and establish partnerships between the University of Birmingham and institutions in Brazil. The Rutherford Fund grants program provides funding for higher education institutions in the United Kingdom to improve their global strategic partnerships.