About

This profile was current as of 2023, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Formerly a practicing lawyer, Kellogg Visiting Fellow Vitor Dias has just completed his PhD in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington, where he was an affiliated researcher at the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL) and a research fellow at the Milt and Judi Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession at the Maurer School of Law.

His dissertation explores how climate change exacerbates structural inequalities in society, how the urban poor mobilize against climate injustice, and how states respond to the demands of their citizens facing social-ecological hazards. During his time at Kellogg, Dias will work on his book project to publish his dissertation as a monograph. 

With support from the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Dias has conducted multi-site, mixed-methods fieldwork on the local governance of and rights-mobilization against urban floods in Brazil’s Amazon.

His other projects include studying how social actors and formal organizations respond to global governance. Focusing on law firms, Dias has analyzed how lawyers have shaped country-level policies in Brazil while devising organizational strategies to succeed in increasingly globalized markets. He also has assessed patterns of racial inequality in hiring, promotion, and compensation in the legal profession in particular and in elite labor markets in general. 

In addition to co-authored book chapters, Dias’ research has appeared in World Development, Law & Social Inquiry, Texas Law Review, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

Dias also earned an LLM from Indiana University Maurer School of Law, an LLM from Fundação Getulio Vargas, and an LLB from Centro Universitário do Pará in Brazil.

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