Helena Sampaio is a professor of the Faculty of Education at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. She has been a productivity fellow at CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) since 2015 and an advisor to the coordination of the Social Sciences area at Fapesp (Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo (University Rankings of Folha de S. Paulo). She also served as the National Secretary of the Secretariat for Regulation and Supervision of Higher Education (SERES) at the Ministry of Education (MEC) from January 2023 to February 2024.
Sampaio graduated in Social Sciences (1982), earned her master's degree in Social Anthropology (1989), and her doctorate in Political Science (1998) from the University of São Paulo (USP). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship (2019/2020) at the Centre de Recherches sur le Brésil Colonial et Contemporain at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris and defended her Livre-Docência in the area of Culture and Education at the Faculty of Education of the State University of Campinas in 2022.
Sampaio is the editor-in-chief of the journal Pro-Posições (Qualis 1A) and a member of the editorial board of the Faculty of Education/Unicamp Publishing House. She is a founding member of the Laboratory for Studies on Higher Education (LEES) and the Center for Anthropology of Educational Processes (CeAPE), both at Unicamp.
Sampaio conducts studies on higher education, mainly on private higher education, comparative higher education systems, law and regulation, and student access and retention.
