Epistemic Inclusion in Brazilian Higher Education: Examining the Role of Ethnic-Racial Quotas and the Meeting of Knowledges Program

Abstract (English)

Over the past two decades, Brazil has launched educational policies aimed at transforming the composition of its universities, most notably through the implementation of ethnic-racial quotas — a policy mechanism that reserves a percentage of university admission slots for Black and Indigenous individuals, as well as those from low-income backgrounds. These policies have contributed to diversifying the student body in public universities, which were previously predominantly white.
Although ethnic-racial quotas represent a significant step toward greater plurality within the university, a mismatch persists between the increasing diversity of student bodies — which carry with them distinct epistemologies and lived experiences — and the still limited diversification of both the teaching staff and the knowledges formally recognized within the university.
In response to these dynamics, the Meeting of Knowledges program was launched in 2010 and is now implemented in over 20 universities across Brazil. This initiative promotes epistemic inclusion by opening universities to non-Western forms of knowledge and epistemologies — particularly those of Indigenous peoples, Afro-Brazilians, and other traditional communities. It invites the so-called “masters” of these knowledges to teach as professors in regular university courses, fostering transformations in both the ethnic-racial composition of academia and the university curriculum.
This paper draws on ethnographic experiences of accompanying such courses. The study followed two distinct formats: one in which students and professors visited an Indigenous traditional territory with the purpose of learning from the local context and its knowledge practices, and others in which traditional masters taught within the university setting.
Drawing on ethnographic research accompanying these courses, this paper reflects on how different ways of knowing are mobilized to create intercultural dialogues. I analyze mechanisms of conciliation, differentiation, or refusal when knowledges coexist, as well as the methodological, administrative, and temporal challenges involved in building more inclusive and pluriepistemic educational practices.