Maria Paula Bertran

This profile was current as of 2018 when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Maria Paula Bertran (PhD, University of São Paulo School of Law) will join the Kellogg Institute for the fall 2018 semester as the Brazilian Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Democracy and Human Development.

At Kellogg, Bertran will research the sociological phenomenon of debt as a stimulator of the mobilization of social movements and the legal phenomenon of debt as a mechanism of income transfer in Brazil. The project aims to use real estate indebtedness as a strategy to understand the process of social mobilization in Brazil. Bertran’s research will be carried out by a combination of empirical work and qualitative interviews as well as quantitative and theoretical approaches. 

Bertran has published both books and articles of a highly interdisciplinary nature on the intersection of law, social development, and economics. Her books include Justice and Contract: Between Commutative and Distributive Justices and Contract Interpretation and Economic Analysis of Law: The Case of the Breach of Leasing Contracts.

Bertran is Associate Professor and Chair of Ribeirão Preto Law School at the University of São Paulo.