The Brazil Institute mourns the passing of Amaury de Souza

Former Wilson Center Fellow Amaury de Souza died in Rio de Janeiro on Friday August 17 of pancreatic cancer. He was 69. An influential political analist and former university professor, Amaury de Souza studied sociology, political science and management at the federal university of his homestate of Minas Gerais before pursuing graduate studies in the United States, where he received a doctoral degree in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A founding member of the University Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro, which was succeeded by the Rio de Janeiro State University, Amaury was a visiting lecturer at Rio's Pontifical Catholic University, Notre Dame, Duke and the universities of California and North Carolina. He was a member of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, University of Michigan. He was also a visiting researcher of the  Center for Hemispheric Policy of the University of Miami.

In  addition to his academic activities, Amaury de Souza was a highly demanded consultant for business and governmental agencies. In 1998 and 2005, he served as a consultant on projects of the Brazilian presidency Secretariat for Strategic Affairs. As a founding partner of Techne and MCM Consultores Associados, based in Rio and São Paulo, he worked for financial and industrial companies and trade associations from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Porto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Portugal and the United States.

A prolific writer, Amaury examined in his most recent books two of the most consequential policy issues in Brazil today. Brazil's International Agenda: Foreign Policy from Fernando Henrique Cardoso to Lula resulted from two rounds of research surveys conducted on behalf of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) in 2003 and 2008 with hundreds of members of the Brazilian foreign policy community of diplomats, politicians, business executives, academics and journalists.  He reflected on the findings of the first survey  at a conference on "New Directions of Brazilian Foreign Policy" the Brazil Institute co-hosted with the Brookings Institution in Washington, in 2007.  His last book, co-authored with sociologist Bolivar Lamounier, focused on  the expanding Brazilian middle class.