For the past two decades, I’ve been investigating the legacies of eugenics and the need to unbury, understand, and heal the roots of the eugenic’s tree left to flourish freely after its branches and trunk were cut in 1945. My today’s research (postdoctoral at Universidade Estadual de Maringá, UEM, Paraná) is to understand how sterilization in Brazil operated as a consensual method during the 1960s-1980s but was rooted in eugenic principles from the early 1900s. I’m also studying (with a fellowship from the Kentucky Historical Society) the files from the Kentucky Birth Control League to identify why Kentucky didn’t have any sterilization laws as its boundaries states.
We collaborate with Prof. Marius Turda’s initiative (Oxford Brookes University) Confront Eugenics which serves as a unifying platform for various anti-eugenic activities. It aims to consolidate synergies among scholars of eugenics, activists, practitioners, journalists, curators, and artists across the world and aspires to build conceptual bridges across academic disciplines and mobilize communities, while at the same time facilitating public engagement with the history and legacies of eugenics.
This is an independent research group with people from several fields of study dedicated to investigating and advocating to unbury the roots of the eugenics tree, to understand the path of building Brazilian identity, perpetuated methods of exclusion, prejudice, and injustice.
GEPHE – Grupo de pesquisa Higiene Mental Eugenia
Led by Dra. Maria Lúcia Boarini (Graduate Program in Psychology at Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Paraná) this research group collects and investigates documents about the Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental and nurture research that unveils the historical connections between eugenics and mental health.
Digital archives created during the pandemic of Covid-19 by historians concerned how the memories of these years will be collected by archives. The archive contains hundreds of records submitted by ordinary people and their unique experiences during the pandemic period. At the end of 2021, the group published some of the collection in form of a book.
It’s a platform where I speak freely about my research, books, and reflections with some of my best colleagues to discuss history and historiography.
Pietra Diwan 