From the perspective of the Geographies of Knowledge, research groups can be understood as places of knowledge, that is, as institutional settings in which scientific practices are organized and knowledge is produced, circulated and legitimized (Livingstone, 1995, 2003; Meusburger et al., 2010). Beyond their administrative functions, they constitute spaces of collaboration, training and scientific production, while simultaneously operating as arenas of competition for authority and legitimacy within the scientific field (Bourdieu, 2001). Research groups are therefore approached here as strategic infrastructures through which the unequal geographies of science and the production of knowledge in the Global South can be examined.

Approaching research groups as places of knowledge, this section presents a set of general considerations organized into five theoretical dimensions: (i) materiality and infrastructure; (ii) their constitution as epistemic cores; (iii) their role in the training of new researchers; (iv) their articulation across multiple scales and networks; and (v) their symbolic dimension as arenas of struggle over scientific authority. Through these lenses, we argue that research groups not only inscribe themselves geographically within the existing scientific structure, but also act as active agents of transformation and as strategic sites for understanding the unequal geographies of science and the global distribution of knowledge.

Research groups are, first and foremost, concrete physical places, situated in specific territories and anchored in particular institutions. They are geographical spaces with extent, location, and materiality, hosting scientific practices and technical artifacts in highly diverse arrangements, ranging from modest rooms furnished with tables, chairs and bookcases to highly sophisticated laboratories equipped with cutting-edge technologies and substantial budgets. What characterizes them, therefore, is not only their formal or administrative existence, but the ways in which they are materialized, sustained and reproduced in logistical and infrastructural terms

Beyond their physical form, these groups function as nodes of concentrated resources: salaries, research grants, equipment, consumables, databases, specialized software and other devices that make scientific activity possible. The density and sophistication of this infrastructure not only express but also reinforce unequal circuits of funding, recognition and prestige within the scientific system.

In many national contexts, including Brazil, a research group acquires full effectiveness and institutional visibility when it is officially certified by state bodies and becomes eligible to compete for funding through calls issued by research agencies and public or private institutional partnerships. Under these conditions, it ceases to be merely a site of intellectual work and is affirmed as an active unit within science and technology policies, intervening in institutional agendas and strategies for scientific development. A research group is thus simultaneously a space of knowledge production and a spatial and institutional agent of science, whose material conditions both shape and are shaped by the concrete possibilities of conducting research.

Beyond their materiality, research groups operate as nuclei for the organization of scientific thought, structuring themselves around themes, problems, concepts and theoretical approaches that guide investigative practice. Within these spaces, research agendas are formulated, objects of study are defined, and vocabularies and interpretive matrices are stabilized, thereby constituting epistemic communities that share worldviews and strategies for intervening in the world

This internal structuring, although plural and often heterogeneous, enables research groups to function as platforms for the consolidation of disciplinary subfields. By organizing their activities into thematic lines, they contribute to scientific specialization, theoretical and methodological consolidation, and intellectual innovation. In many cases, they become national or international reference points in specific areas, influencing collaboration networks, publication circuits, academic curricula and even public policies.

At the same time, research groups operate as sites of mediation between scientific traditions, fostering dialogue across perspectives, the circulation of ideas and the formation of schools of thought. More than merely executing projects, they are actors in the construction and reconfiguration of disciplinary fields and are fundamental to understanding processes of intellectual segmentation in specific territories. All of this, however, is always relational: the epistemic density of a group depends on its position vis-à-vis other research collectives at different scales, on the flows of public and private funding, and on the place occupied by its researchers within their respective university systems.

Research groups do not operate as isolated entities; rather, they are embedded in networks that connect local, national and international scales of scientific activity. Their ability to establish collaborations, secure resources and attain visibility varies considerably, generating differentiated positions within the scientific system. While some groups remain strongly dependent upon local institutional settings, others develop broader connections with funding agencies, centres of excellence and international research networks.

From the perspective of the Geographies of Knowledge, this multiscalar character reveals that scientific activity is organized through uneven geographies of circulation, connectivity and recognition (Livingstone, 2003; Meusburger et al., 2010). At the same time, these differences reflect the unequal distribution of scientific, institutional and symbolic capital within the scientific field (Bourdieu, 2001). Research groups therefore constitute strategic nodes through which hierarchies, opportunities and asymmetries in knowledge production are continuously produced, reproduced and negotiated across multiple scales.

Beyond their role as nuclei of intellectual production, research groups are central sites for scientific training and socialization. Embedded in universities and research centers, they host successive generations of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers and visiting scholars in mobility, operating as key sites for the transmission, updating and re-creation of knowledge, practices and forms of belonging to the scientific field.

Their formative function extends far beyond the mere mastery of theoretical, technical or methodological content. Within these collectives, emerging researchers learn how to think, investigate and communicate science, appropriating conceptual repertoires, specialized languages, writing styles, research procedures and academic norms of conduct. This is a situated learning process in which patterns of recognition and criteria of legitimation specific to particular fields, subfields or disciplinary traditions are internalized. Through this process that some members prepare to occupy positions in other institutions and to structure new groups, thereby contributing to the renewal and expansion of scientific communities.

Research groups also play a decisive role in the construction of scientific and professional identities, traditions and trajectories. By articulating training, supervision, mentoring, support networks and opportunities for integration into research circuits, they operate as platforms for academic projection, directly influencing the professional futures of their members. In contexts marked by the precarization of intellectual labor and the intensification of pressures for productivity, these collectives additionally assume functions of care, resistance and solidarity, configuring dense environments of belonging, continuity and symbolic protection in the face of the uncertainties of the scientific field.

Beyond their operational and formative functions, research groups also constitute symbolic devices within the scientific field. They concentrate forms of recognition, prestige and intellectual authority and, in doing so, become privileged arenas for the accumulation and reproduction of scientific capital (Bourdieu, 2001). By defining research agendas, legitimizing particular themes and methodologies, and mediating access to scientific networks, research groups contribute to delineating the boundaries of the field and to producing differentiated positions among researchers and institutions.

Consequently, research groups cannot be understood merely as administrative or organizational arrangements. Rather, they are strategic sites in which scientific authority is negotiated and where hierarchies, visibilities and asymmetries are continuously produced, reproduced and contested. Their analysis therefore provides an opportunity to examine the spatial and institutional organization of scientific activity and the uneven geographies of knowledge within the Brazilian scientific system.

On the basis of these premises, the following sections examine the research groups registered in the Directory of Research Groups of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the principal institutional instrument for the registration and monitoring of scientific activity in Brazil. As of 2026, the database comprised more than 37,000 active research groups, of which 616 were classified within the field of Geography. Examining this empirical universe makes it possible to investigate how the Brazilian geographical field is institutionally, thematically and territorially organized and how its internal centres and peripheries are reproduced through the uneven distribution and organization of research groups.

This study is grounded in a mixed-methods design, descriptive and interpretive in nature, in line with critical and reflexive methodological traditions in Human Geography. The methodological choice rests on the understanding that spatial phenomena cannot be apprehended solely through objective metrics, but require situated interpretations capable of capturing the complexity, historicity and territorial variability of the processes under investigation. The analysis also acknowledges the importance of mobilizing distinct methodological perspectives to enhance analytical depth and address the epistemic diversity that characterizes the geographical field.

At the empirical level, the research draws primarily on data provided by the Directory of Research Groups in Brazil (DGP), managed by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), which is widely regarded as the principal official instrument for the registration, systematization and monitoring of scientific activity in the country. This institutional database makes it possible to observe, in a structured, open and nationally comprehensive manner, the organizational affiliations, research themes and territorial distribution of certified research groups across Brazil.

Data collection was carried out in April 2026 through direct consultation of the public DGP platform. A clarification is necessary. Two types of data made available by the Directory were used in this study. The first consists of the statistical censuses conducted by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and publicly disseminated through the Directory's platform. These censuses are carried out at specific intervals, with the earliest dating from 2000 and the most recent from 2025. They provide general information that is representative of the respective census period. In addition to the census data, the Directory of Research Groups (DGP) platform allows users to conduct targeted searches for individual research groups. This manual data collection was also undertaken for the purposes of this study. Unlike the census data, however, manually collected data are inherently dynamic, since newly created research groups are automatically incorporated into the platform. Likewise, research groups may be removed from the Directory's records due to a lack of updates or other administrative factors. For inclusion and exclusion, the data were thematically disaggregated by broad fields of knowledge, following the taxonomy officially adopted by CNPq. The classification therefore thus followed the established CNPq categories (Human Sciences, Exact and Earth Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences, among others). In the case of Geography, only research groups classified under the broad field “Human Sciences” and, within it, in the “Geography” area of knowledge, that were listed as “certified by the institution” (that is, with an active institutional affiliation) were selected. The analysis considered all groups registered between 2000 and 2026, enabling a longitudinal analysis of the Brazilian scientific system in both quantitative and spatial terms. Non-certified or deactivated groups were excluded.

From the historical series for the broad field of Human Sciences, we extracted a specific subsample comprising all Geography research groups. This final dataset comprises 609 groups active in 2026, whose evolution was examined in detail. The next step consisted of conducting a cartographic analysis of the cumulative distribution of Geography research groups, with the aim of revealing their territorial expansion and regional asymmetries over time. Mapping was carried out using QGIS (version 3.34.9-Prizren), adopting the SIRGAS 2000 projection system (EPSG: 4674). The host institutions of the groups were georeferenced based on their municipal locations, with the SIGLAS/IBGE 2020 system to extract geographic coordinates.

The third methodological stage involved a thematic analysis of the research groups, in order to understand their internal organization in terms of fields and subfields of knowledge. Drawing on self-declared data in the DGP, each group’s research lines were systematized and reorganized into classification matrix comprising five broad fields of activity: (a) Human Geography; (b) Physical Geography; (c) Geographical Education; (d) Geotechnologies; and (e) Regional Geography. Each field was then broken down into specific subfields (such as Urban Geography, Climatology, Geoecology, Epistemology, among others), according to thematic recurrence and the conceptual coherence of the activities undetaken. Although inspired by conventional divisions within Geography, this classification was constructed inductively, based on empirical evidence drawn directly from the records of the official database. This thematic systematization made it possible not only to produce a more fine-grained interpretation of the epistemological constitution of the groups, but also to identify gaps, overlaps and border zones between disciplinary areas. This approach that articulates thematic taxonomy with institutional spatiality, thereby enabling reflection on the internal logics that structure the Brazilian geographical field as a network of knowledge production.

The final step consisted of analyzing the gender distribution in group leadership, considering both thematic fields and disciplinary subfields. Data on the leader of each group active in 2026 were extracted from the DGP and classified as male or female, according to self-declaration. On this basis, we constructed a cross-tabulation matrix between gender and thematic area was constructed, allowing the production of descriptive tables and comparative graphs that reveal internal gender asymmetries within the geographical field.

Finally, despite the robustness and broad coverage of the DGP/CNPq, this study acknowledges methodological constraints inherent to the self-declared nature of the database. These may result in some underrepresentation, inconsistencies or outdated information. Moreover, the database does not provide tools for the direct assessment of the groups’ overall scientific output (such as articles, books, projects or collaboration networks), and is restricted to institutional and quantitative descriptors. For these reasons, this study concentrates on analyzing of the organizational, territorial and thematic structure of Geography research groups, leaving to future studies a more in-depth exploration of the qualitative dimensions of their production and scientific impact. The overall research framework adopted in this study is presented in Figure 1.

According to the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), research groups are collectives of researchers and students organized around specific lines of inquiry and coordinated by one or two leaders (CNPq, 2026). Over recent decades, they have become one of the principal organizational forms of scientific activity in Brazil and a central mechanism for structuring graduate education and knowledge production.

The consolidation of research groups reflects the broader institutionalization of Brazilian science, driven by the actions of CAPES, CNPq and the National Graduate Plans (PNPG). Since the 1970s, graduate programmes have been encouraged to define areas of concentration and research lines, fostering the organization of scientific activities through formally constituted groups (Vinha, 2015). This process was further reinforced by Resolution No. 5 of 10 March 1983, which established research activities as one of the criteria for the accreditation of stricto sensu graduate programmes in Brazil (Brasil, 1983).

A major milestone in this trajectory was the creation of the Directory of Research Groups in Brazil (DGP) in 1992. Maintained by CNPq, the platform constitutes the principal national database for monitoring scientific activities and provides systematic information on the characteristics, composition and evolution of research groups in the country. As such, it offers a valuable instrument for examining the institutional and territorial organization of Brazilian science. The growth of research groups across the different regions of Brazil from 2000 to 2026 is presented in Figure 2.

In 2000, a total of 11,760 research groups were registered in Brazil. By 2025, this number had risen to 45,480, representing an increase of more than 350% over a 25-year period in absolut terms. It is noteworthy that this upward trend in the number of research groups occurred in all regions of the country, even though each presents particular characteristics. As a country of continental scale, Brazil exhibits marked levels of inequality that are also reflected in the architecture of higher education and research policy. This means that some regions display trajectories in science and technology that are far more advanced than others. The territorial distribution of higher education institutions and, more specifically, of graduate programs makes these contrasts particularly evident (Reyes & Lamego, 2021), highlighting the challenges that persist for the production of scientific knowledge at a national scale The previous figure shows in greater detail the regional differences in the evolution of the number of research groups in Brazil: the Southeast region concentrates the largest number, with a total of 16,664 groups according to 2025 data.

In 2000, this figure was 6,733, which represents an increase of approximately 233%. Indeed, all Brazilian regions show a substantial rise in the number of research groups. In the South, which had 2,317 groups in 2000, there was an increase of approximately 295%, reaching 9,151 research groups in 2025. In the Center-West, the increase was approximately 436%, from 636 groups in 2000 to 3,408 in 2025. The two regions that recorded the highest growth rates were the Northeast, with an increase of approximately 656%, rising from 1,720 groups in 2000 to 12,998 in 2025, and the North, where the number of groups expanded from 354 to 3,211, representing an increase of approximately 807%.

Finally, the gender composition of the research community reveals no marked disparities at the aggregate level. Between 2000 and 2008, men remained numerically predominant, whereas the 2010, 2014 and 2016 censuses pointed to an increasing convergence between male and female participation. By 2025, this trend had culminated in a reversal of the historical pattern, with women accounting for 52% of all researchers and thus becoming the majority. Nevertheless, these national aggregates should be interpreted with caution, as important differences may persist across particular fields of knowledge, reflecting distinct disciplinary trajectories and gendered dynamics of scientific participation.

Taking into account the specificities of scientific disciplines, as well as shared affinities, CNPq has established a classification that organizes knowledge into broad fields. This division is crucial, since it underpins numerous funding calls and enables the construction of a more robust overview of Brazil’s scientific production. The eight major fields of knowledge in the country are: Human Sciences, Applied Social Sciences, Health Sciences, Engineering and Computer Science, Exact and Earth Sciences, Biological Sciences, Languages, Literature and Arts, and Agricultural Sciences. Research groups are likewise classified according to these categories. The following figure presents information on the growth in the number of research groups in each major field of knowledge, as well as on their proportional differentiation.

Although the methodological flowchart presented in the previous figure suggests a relatively standardized pathway, it is crucial to recognize that research groups are far from being homogeneous units. Organizational forms and modes of operation vary significantly across fields of knowledge, institutional cultures, interests and the specific trajectories of each collective. There is, therefore, no ideal size or single organizational model that can serve as a reference point. In some contexts, the duration of research, the density of networks, often international, and the degree of institutionalization of internal routines are central; in others, these elements clearly assume a secondary role. This heterogeneity must be taken into account when interpreting the data so as to avoid hasty generalizations about what a “typical” research group would be.

Education, Psychology, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Political Science, Theology and Archaeology are the disciplines that, together with Geography, comprise the broader field of the Humanities In Table 1. It is noteworthy that Geography is not the discipline with the largest number of research groups within this area, a position occupied by Education. However, Geography is the discipline that has shown the greatest quantitative growth, with an increase of more than 1,000% between 2000, when there were 71 groups, and 2025, when the number reaches 747.

The establishment of the first research group in Geography, registered in 1983, occurred precisely at the moment when national policies to expand graduate education in Brazil were being consolidated. Yet it emerged in the Department of Geography at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), a university located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, outside the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre. Notably, this origin contrasts with the historical centrality of the Southeast Region in the Brazilian university system—especially the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro which, since the first half of the twentieth century, have hosted the country’s main centers of scientific excellence. These states continue, to this day, to lead indicators related to academic production and performance in national and international rankings, reinforcing their position as hegemonic poles in the Brazilian scientific system.

To some extent, this apparent paradox reflects a spatiality and temporality characteristic of an earlier period, when compared with current dynamics of scientific organization in Brazil and in much of the world. At that time, research groups in Brazil were not yet subject to the structural demands now imposed by graduate programs and state funding agencies, nor were they fully integrated into the institutional circuits of legitimation that shape competition for resources and recognition among scientific leaders.

From the 2000s onward, however, there has been a marked increase in the number of Geography research groups across the country. This process is directly linked to the expansion of the graduate education system, the reconfiguration of public universities, and the strengthening of evaluation mechanisms that increasingly rewarded scientific productivity, particularly through research productivity fellowships and the training of highly qualified human resources at the master’s and doctoral levels.

The structural transformations implemented by the Brazilian federal government since the 2000s onwards triggered a veritable race, by both individual researchers and of institutions, to create research groups. In this context, holding a doctoral degree and being embedded in graduate programs became key strategic requirements for the consolidation of these collectives. Major national institutions, especially those located in state capitals and metropolitan areas and with a longer history of scientific internationalization, were the first to benefit from this process. Many of them had academic staff trained in doctoral and postdoctoral programs abroad, which provided strategic familiarity with international trends as they were being translated into the Brazilian context and granted them competitive advantages in the struggle for funding and prestige.

Thus, the South, Southeast and Northeast regions, the latter particularly in major coastal urban centers, emerged as the main poles for the growth of Geography research groups in Brazil, reproducing, to some extent, the historical legacies of the country’s territorial formation. This pattern underscored the persistence of a deeply unequal geography of knowledge, in which institutional concentration reinforced the dominant circuits of scientific production.

This pattern persisted across the subsequent years in the time series, with the same three regions continuing to lead in the number of research groups, albeit with two important inflections. The first concerns the Center-West region, where institutions such as the University of Brasília (UnB) and the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) came to play a strategic role, benefiting both from the country’s political–administrative centrality and from the intensified circulation of human capital and resources associated Brasília (the Federal District,) and the city of Goiânia, the capital of the state of Goiás.

The second inflection relates to the North region, where the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) and the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) stand out in particular. Both located along the Amazon River system, these institutions have historically mediated the global connections of the cities of Manaus and Belém for at least two centuries, driven by long-standing political, economic and cultural relations. Their regional prominence contrasts sharply with other, more inland areas of the Brazilian North, a pattern that is likewise reproduced in the Center-West and in the interior areas of the other Brazilian regions.

With regard to the internal composition of Geography research groups in Brazil, the data reveal a marked concentration in five major fields of activity: Human Geography (336 groups), Physical Geography (94), Geographical Education (89), Regional Geography (60) and Geotechnologies (34). This distribution reflects not only the breadth of the discipline of Geography, but also the complexity of its thematic and institutional organization in the country.

The prominence of Human Geography must be understood in light of its highly diversified internal configuration, which encompasses a wide range of subfields such as Urban Geography, Agrarian Geography, Cultural Geography and Economic Geography. This heterogeneity helps explain the substantial number of research groups within this field, demonstrating its epistemological vitality and its capacity to engage with multiple scientific and social agendas across Brazil’s different regions, as well as with the institutional logics that structure the respective federal states. Ultimately, the thematic distribution of research groups reveals a Brazilian Geography marked by thematic plurality and a growing degree of specialization that sustains the importance of this disciplinary field.

On the other hand, the strong presence of Geographical Education among the most represented fields deserves particular attention. This prominence directly reflects the importance of training Geography teachers for basic education, a process frequently associated with the expansion of higher education into Brazil’s interior across the national territory. Research groups working in this field not only produce knowledge about the teaching of Geography, but also play a strategic role in articulating universities and basic education, fostering training practices and pedagogical innovations that respond to the territorial realities in which they are embedded. In this sense, Geography Education emerges as a structuring axis of the discipline, connecting scientific production, teacher education, and commitments to national and state plans for public education, with research groups operating as strategic sites within Geographies of Knowledge, especially in a context marked by shortages of Geography teachers in many small municipalities and in peripheral areas of metropolitan regions across different Brazilian states.

The role of research group leaders is also crucial, as it allows an assessment of gender representation in these positions. In the case of Geography, groups may have one or two leaders, and the CNPq does not allow the registration of more than two. In practice, shared leadership is common: 236 groups (38%) have a single leader, whereas 378 groups (62%) are coordinated jointly by two leaders.

With regard to the other members, these positions may include researchers, undergraduate students, master’s students, doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, technical staff and international collaborators. Accurately quantifying the exact number of individuals involved in research groups is challenging, since a given student or researcher may belong to more than one group, a common practice, particularly among PhD holders who establish collaborative ties with several groups simultaneously. It is therefore important to emphasize that the number of participants should not be interpreted as representing unique individuals, but rather as registrations of members affiliated with specific research groups and, as such, counted in that capacity.

Across all Geography research groups in Brazil, there are 13,033 registered members, of whom 5,903 (45%) are PhD holders and 167 (1.2%) are international collaborators. Table 2 below presents additional information that is crucial for understanding Geography research groups in Brazil and their composition in terms of human resources.

Out of a total of 996 researchers registered as group leaders, 598 (60%) are men and 398 (40%) are women. In fact, male predominance persists when leadership is disaggregated by the main fields of Geography. In Human Geography, which has 542 leaders in total, 64% are men. A similar pattern of male hegemony is observed in Physical Geography, where 53% are men, as well as in Geotechnologies, with 62%. Regional Geography is the field with the highest proportion of male leaders: among its 96 leaders, 71% are men. The only field of Geography in which women outnumber men in leadership positions is Geography Education; of its 149 leaders, 59% are women. Greater female presence in leadership can also be observed in two subfields: in Geoecology groups, 52% of leaders are women, and in Environmental Analysis groups, women account for 57% of leadership positions. It is worth noting that the groups in the subfields of Historical Geography and Regionalization are entirely led by men, with 100% male leadership in both cases.

In light of these results, these findings show that Geography research groups in Brazil operate as key components in the institutional, spatial and symbolic structuring of geographical science in the country. Their uneven distributions, privileged thematic fields, leadership patterns and articulations with training processes and territorial contexts all point to the complexity and tensions shaping the discipline. While they express historical continuities in Brazil’s territorial and scientific formation, these groups also reveal new dynamics of mobility, specialization and differentiation. From this perspective, understanding research groups as places of knowledge not only enables a cartography of Brazilian science, but also supports a critical reflection on the mechanisms of concentration, exclusion and recognition within the national scientific system. Building on these reflections, the concluding section presents the main conceptual and empirical contributions of the research, highlighting its limitations, contributions and potential avenues for future investigations in the field of Geographies of Knowledge.