Larissa Rosa Corrêa

Larissa Rosa Corrêa is associate professor of History at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio (PUC-Rio), and a research fellow of the Brazilian Scientific Research Council (CNPq). She also conducts research with the support of the Rio de Janeiro’s Science Foundation (FAPERJ), Brazil. She is a Brazilian labor historian with interests in trade union movements, Labor Justice, labor corporatist systems, Catholic Church and women labor organizations in Brazil and Southern Cone during the Cold War. Larissa Corrêa has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals, including International Labor and Working-Class History, International Review of Social History, and Labor (Durham, N.C.).  She held her PhD in Social History at State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. In her doctoral study, Larissa Corrêa conducted research on trade union relations between Brazil and the United States during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s. She was particularly interested in the exchange program run by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a branch of the AFL-CIO, and the State Department, aimed at Brazilian labor leaderships, which sought to teach them the American way of life and the U.S. labor movement. The results of the research can be seen in two books. The first, published in Portuguese, entitled “Disseram que voltei americanizado: relações sindicais Brasil e Estados Unidos”, Editora da Unicamp, 2017. And the most recent, published in English by the German publisher The Gruyter Oldenbourg, entitled “Anti-Communist Solidarity. US-Brazilian Labor Relations During the Dictatorship in Cold War Brazil (1964-1985)”, 2022. Her current book project, entitled “Transnational Catholic Labor Activism: The Circulation of Worker-Priests Between Europe and South America (1960s and 1970s)”, aims to examine how the working-class under the authoritarian regimes has re-signified the notions of labor rights, social justice, dignity, citizenship and humanity under the influence of the progressive Catholic sector. Her current project enables us to discuss the role of the Catholic Church in the opposition to the Southern Cone military regimes during the Cold War, based on the relationship between the so-called “workers-priests” and the working-class communities. In addition, considering the Catholic Church as a powerful transnational object, this study allows us to rethink the religious and labor connections between Europe and Brazil and Latin America in general, through the analysis of the individual trajectories of foreign and local worker-priests and the role of international Catholic organizations.