Angela Alonso is a professor of Sociology at the University of São Paulo (USP), and acts as the coordinator of the Social Movements and Political Institutions research team at Cebrap (Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning). Furthermore, she also serves on the Adjunct Panel for Humanities and Social Sciences, Architecture and Economy at The São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp).
Alonso holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (2001) and pursued postdoc studies at Yale University (2009–10). She served as Cebrap´s president (2015-2019) and authored a political column for Folha de São Paulo (2016-2023).
She is the author of several books, including Ideias em Movimento: a geração 1870 na crise do Brasil-Império, 2001 (French edition: Idées en mouvement: La génération de 1870 dans la crise du Brésil-Empire, 2014); Joaquim Nabuco: os salões e as rua, 2007, a biography (Joaquim Nabuco – Les salons et les rues, 2017). Flores, votos e balas: o movimento abolicionista brasileiro (1868-1888) (2015); and The Last Abolition: the Brazilian abolitionist movement, 1868-1888 (Cambridge U.P, 2021).
Aditionally, she co-edited Conflitos: fotografia e violência política no Brasil (1889-1964) (with Heloísa Espada, 2017) and co-authored two documentaries with Paulo Markun, about the 2013 Brazilian protests, titled Junho: o começo do avesso, 2020, and Ecos de Junho, 2022).
Her latest book, Treze: a política de rua de Lula a Dilma (2023), focuses on the protests during the Work Party governments in Brazil.
Alonso´s contributions have been recognized through the CNPq/Anpocs (National Social Sciences Association) award for best Ph.D. in Social Sciences (2001), the John S. Guggenheim Foundation fellowship (2009), the Jabuti Prize for best book in Human Sciences in Brazil (2016) and the Brazilian Academy of Writers award for best book of non-fiction of the year (2016).
Over the course of two decades, she has been studying social movements, and she is currently starting research on political assassinations.
Current research project:
The lynching – transnational political violence
Summary:
This research project seeks to conduct a micro-sociological analysis of political lethality, taking as a case study a political assassination in São Paulo’s countryside in 1888. The chosen case holds particular significance due to two factors. Firstly, it represents a striking example of transnational political violence, as it unfolded in Brazil with the involvement of two ex-Confederates from the United States as leaders of the assailants. Secondly, this case study offers an opportunity to explore critical analytical dimensions within the field of political sociology: 1) transnational diffusion of styles of political violence; 2) relationship between political violence and social hierarchies; 3) assimilation of episodes of political violence to the national memory; 4) social mechanisms operating in episodes of lethal political violence and the logic of the political conflicts that unfold in extreme political violence, the assassination of the opponent.