The MARIA AND JOÃO ALEIXO INSTITUTE is a new type of institution that goes beyond the traditional ways in which knowledge is structured. Traditional knowledge production institutions, notably universities, are dominated by bureaucratic and administrative formalism; by the hierarchy of knowledge; by the obsessive search for titles and the conquest of distinctive positions among the peers themselves; and the rarity of studies and interventions that deal with issues that affect daily life, in particular that of peripheral social groups.

The challenges posed to the peripheries in the contemporary world also point to the need to broaden the technical, theoretical and methodological qualification of social subjects, particularly those from peripheral territories. Forming intellectuals engaged in the understanding of social reality and capable of acting as protagonists in intervention processes in reality are demands placed on the construction of a society sustained in the recognition of differences and the quest to reduce inequalities.

The purpose of the Maria and João Aleixo Institute is to contribute to the understanding of the forms, functions and processes that characterize the peripheral territories, taking into account the social practices of their subjects and their forms of insertion in the social world. Secondly, the Institute will seek to systematize and disseminate social methodologies and technologies that allow the extension of the possibilities of the subjects coming from the peripheries, especially, and their political place in contemporary reality. Finally, IMJA will seek to build an International Movement of Peripheries that articulates associated researchers, social activists and cultural producers to create collaborative processes that allow the expansion of studies and propositions of territorial development policies.