The jury of the Mário Quartin Graça Scientific Award, meeting at Casa da América Latina on 3 October 2025, decided to award an honourable mention to the dissertation “Por uma política cultural de dimensão territorial: diálogos entre periferias urbanas de Lisboa e São Paulo” [Towards a cultural policy with territorial dimension: dialogues between the urban peripheries of Lisbon and São Paulo] by Ana Louback Lopes, developed within the framework of the Doctoral Programme “Cities and Urban Cultures” (CES/FEUC) and supervised by Carlos Fortuna.

This work analyses how cultural production in the urban peripheries of Lisbon and São Paulo reveals both the demand for the right to culture and the effects of socio-spatial segregation. Based on the idea that peripheries in different contexts share similar challenges, the research uses a qualitative and empirical approach to study local cultural initiatives, drawing on data, interviews and field experiences.

The methodology, inspired by Deleuzian ‘dialogues’, highlights relationships and connections between the analysed cases, focusing on three central axes: access to artistic creation, consolidation of cultural circuits, and management models. Based on these dialogues, the work proposes guidelines for cultural policies that are sensitive to the territorial specificities and socio-spatial conditions that shape culture in the peripheries.

The Mário Quartin Graça Scientific Award is given annually to a doctoral dissertation in Social and Human Sciences by a student who has completed the third cycle at a university in Iberia, Latin America, or the United States of America, in an initiative of Casa da América Latina.

The jury for the Award, chaired by Ambassador Francisco Seixas da Costa, is composed of Professor Ângela Fernandes (Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon), Professors José Soares Neves (Iscte – Lisbon University Institute) and Pedro Cardim (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon) and Manuela Júdice (CAL).