Cyrus Afshar

Cyrus Afshar joined UNRISD in October 2012 to assist Peter Utting in the Social and Solidarity Economy project.
He completed two Bachelors degrees in Brazil, in Journalism at the Pontific Catholic University, and in Social Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo. At the end of this period, he worked as an intern for one year at CBN news radio station, and started a year-long university exchange programme at IEP-Université Lyon 2. After that, he joined Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, where he worked for two years as a reporter, dealing with topics of ethical consumption, alternative consumption and, after, international affairs. He left the newspaper to join Instituto Polis, a Brazilian NGO that researches urban public policies and local development. Cyrus worked at the institute for one year as the communication manager before starting his master’s.

He joined the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Programme in Public Policy and received an MA degree in Development Studies (Governance and Democracy specialization) at the Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands) and an MA in International Relations at Ibei (Spain). His first dissertation explored the continuities and changes in neoliberalism in contemporary Brazil and, on his second dissertation, the topic was the social and political underpinnings of the “reprimarization” of Brazilian international insertion.