Researcher at the University of Liverpool is a guest of the 2016 Aberje Fellowship Program

Aberje – Brazilian Association for Corporate Communication established a partnership with Beatriz García, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool, for a one-year study of the cultural legacy of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Garcia worked in conjunction with the School of Communication and Arts at USP (University of Sao Paulo) and with the support from the British Academy, through the Newton fund, a research initiative of the British government.

Beatriz García has dedicated the last 15 years researching the cultural dimensions of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the past, she has analyzed the impact of various Olympics – Sydney (Australia) in 2000, Athens (Greece) in 2004, Beijing (China) in 2008 and in particular, London in 2012, where she was responsible for coordinating the Cultural Olympiad of the city. Garcia is one of the world’s leading experts in the analysis of the cultural legacy of major events.

In “Reflections on 2016: On the need for both ‘black’ and ‘white’ narratives around mega-event impacts,” published on the website of the Institute of Cultural Capital at the University of Liverpool, García talks about the most significant cultural legacy of the 2016 Rio Games, the Olympic Boulevard, a space in the center of Rio de Janeiro which carried the “Olympic spirit” to the entire population. According to her, it was quite an innovative initiative of the Games because it created “a new and shared space, where various communities felt safe and were happy to spend time there.” Read the full article here.