David Francisco de Moura Penteado

I’m a doctoral candidate in Social History at the University of São Paulo. Currently I’m at King’s College London as a visiting doctoral student. The subject of my thesis concerns the development of science periodicals in Brazil throughout the 19th-century, focusing on their role in transmitting technical and specialized knowledge to the lay public, such as in the introduction of new production methods. Recently, my research has also covered other aspects of the circulation of technical-scientific knowledge, history of agriculture, and human–animal relations.

In the first half of the 19th century, dozens of periodicals that proposed to popularise scientific knowledge and its techniques were published in Rio de Janeiro with a common objective: a civilising project for the newborn nation. Among these periodicals, in 1833, a periodical derived from this tradition was launched, which stood out for its longevity and specificity in the search to improve the country’s production methods, O Auxiliador da Industria Nacional (The Helper of National Industry). The periodical was created by the Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional (Society for the Promotion of the National Industry), having circulated for sixty years. This research seeks to understand the history and functioning of the periodical and which transformations it underwent, editorial and institutional. Through the analysis of institutional documents, the compilation and classification of the periodical's content, the examination of the relevant official bibliography, and the historiography of international and national science journalism and science communication, this project proposes to analyse the history of the periodical over its six decades of publication, the thematic evolution of its content, and the participation of the Brazilian government on its funding and distribution.