Professor Maria Fernanda Peres from the Department of Preventive Medicine, University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil, is visiting the VRC this month. She is the Principal Investigator, alongside Professor Manuel Eisner, of The São Paulo Project on the Social Development of Children (sp-proso).
This project uses the methodology of the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso) and the Montevideo Project on the Social Development of Children (m-proso) to research risk and protective factors for violent behaviour and victimisation in Brazil. Brazil has high levels of interpersonal violence, especially among young people.
Prof Peres holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Her research interests are in youth and adolescents risk factors for violence, homicide studies and violence prevention from the perspective of public health. She is a collaborative researcher at the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo, where she is the head of the WHO Collaborating Center on Research on violence and prevention. She is also a member of the Violence Prevention Alliance. Much of her current work is focused on the study of homicide trajectories and the epidemiology of risk factors for violence and bullying among adolescents in Brazil.
During her visit, Prof Peres will also work on some comparative analyses in collaboration with Prof Amy Nivette from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands.