Alexandre da Silva Manzoni is awarded at the 1st Postgraduate Hall at UFRGS

PhD student Alexandre da Silva Manzoni, from the Postgraduate Program in Sociology (PPGS/UFRGS), was awarded in the area of Human Sciences during the 1st Postgraduate Salon at UFRGS, part of the UFRGS 2025 Salon. The research, entitled “Affection, memory and mourning: a sociology of nameless loss”, proposes a socio-anthropological reflection on parental grief and its affective feelings that go through the experience of loss.

The study is based on the author's personal experience and combines theoretical and empirical research to understand how mothers and fathers elaborate the absence of their children based on memory, language and emotional relationships. The work integrates the so-called Affective Turn in social sciences, shifting the view on grief beyond the idea of individual overcoming and understanding it as a social, relational and existential phenomenon.

“The recognition surrounding this thesis is due to my son, Ben. This work is a gesture in his memory and an invitation to think about how social and emotional life transcends corporeal life. I see mourning not as a process of elaborating the loss of those we love, especially this unnamed loss, which is the loss of the child. I interpret it as a social and affective marker, which starts to constitute the becoming of the bereaved subject”, says Alexandre.

By combining personal experience with the rigor of academic research, the thesis offers a unique contribution to contemporary sociology, by approaching grief not only as an individual experience, but as a field of production of meanings and bonds that persist beyond material life.

The complete list of award-winning works at the UFRGS 2025 Salon can be found at:
 ufrgs.br/propesq