“Pod-Pesquisar?” Podcast Production as a Methodological and Narrative Tool in the Social Sciences

Abstract

How to analyze and narrate the 50-year history of a Graduate Program? This work presents a methodological reflection on the possible ways to collect, organize, interpret, and narrate the 50 years of existence of the Graduate Program in Sociology (PPGS) at Unicamp. It is based on two consecutive studies conducted with the purpose of analyzing the history and research lines, as well as verifying the existence of one or more “sociological schools” in PPGS-Unicamp using distinct methodologies. In the first study, a database was built with all doctoral theses defended in the Program between 2004 and 2024. Based on this, analyses were conducted regarding the research themes, titles, abstracts, and bibliography cited in each thesis. In the second study, interviews in a podcast format were conducted with two generations of the Program's faculty, organized according to their alignment with each research line. Therefore, this work seeks to reflect on the scope and limitations of each research method for analyzing the sociological traditions developed over the five decades of the PPGS's existence.