Interpersonal violence in the academic environment: perceptions of a university community

Abstract

This study aims to understand the perceptions of violence at the university in an academic community from the reports of its occurrence on a university campus. Seventeen qualitative interviews were carried out with key informants: students, lecturers, and staff members who had a manager position or representation in the collegiate. The interviews were transcribed, and their content analyzed. It was possible to identify the types of violence into five categories, according to the participants’ experience and their recurrent discursive references. They are: hazing, gender or race-based violence, moral harassment, institutional violence, and other kinds of violence. The acts of violence in the university are varied and to know them offers subsidies to improve the institutional responses or create news forms of facing it.