Consul General of Portugal to chat with students

The Consul General of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro, Ambassador Gabriela Soares de Albergaria, will take part in a round table discussion at IMPA Tech next Thursday (26) at 13:30. The activity, proposed by “Language skills: textual narratives” professor Cilene Rodrigues, will address diplomatic practices and problem solving.

“We are holding this conversation considering the main issues raised by the UN [United Nations]. We thought we’d bring a diplomat to the discussion, like Ambassador Gabriela de Albergaria, who is linked to our worldview, the Lusophone worldview. We invited the Consul to have a moment of reflection,” said the teacher.

Gabriela de Albergaria has been a diplomat since 1990 and has represented Portugal in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the United States and was a counselor in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. She has also worked in Brasília and Bogotá, Colombia. The Consul is the first woman to hold the post in Rio de Janeiro.

The conversation with the diplomat was conceived with the content of the Language Skills subject in mind. One of the aims is to teach students how to deal with formal discussion and problem-solving situations, especially from a collective perspective.

Cilene also stresses the importance of discussing current issues within academia and how scientific involvement can be useful in resolving various conflicts. In this context, the priority of some ‘Global Issues’ stipulated by the UN will be discussed.

“It’s important that we, as an academic institution, an academic collective, consider the relevance of discussing current problems. This conversation gives us the opportunity to have a broader view of these problems, at the same time as we are training the student’s performance in a formal context.”

Divided into four blocks, the discussion will also focus on the role of mathematics in solving the ‘Global Issues’. The aim is to think about how the discipline can be an ally in solving emerging challenges, such as food insecurity, peace instability and the other 23 cited by the UN.

“We need to know how mathematics and related areas can contribute to mitigating these problems. We need to think about how mathematics and data science can help at this time, how they can be useful,” said Cilene.

Another proposal is to think about the role of a Diplomatic Corps in representing the country and the importance of collaborative practices between Portuguese-speaking countries in the current scenario.

“The idea is to think about how we Portuguese-speaking peoples, collectively, Europe, South America, Africa and Asia, can act to solve these problems. This is very important because the academic world, in a way, is charged with interaction and practice in solving these problems,” she concluded.

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