José Vitor Barros studied sociology and international relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (Brazil), and philosophy at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). At the moment, he is a Masters Candidate in the Sociology Department of the University of São Paulo and a Visiting Fellow at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft under Prof. Rudolf Stichweh. His research interests lie in the interseccion of international political sociology, slavery studies, social theory and sociological systems theory. In his Master's research, he performs a conceptual reconstruction of "inclusion/exclusion" and "world society" in Niklas Luhmann's and Rudolf Stichweh's work.