Disability Studies is a new, but nonetheless vital, area of research in Brazil. With almost two and a half million poverty-stricken Brazilians receiving government stipends for chronic physical and mental impairments, scholars as well as government administrators face the challenge of providing adequate support to a great number of people and their families in order to guarantee basic rights of well-being. Although Brazilian health-care professionals with mostly biomedical training have long been active in this field, only recently have social scientists begun to bring their perspectives to the complicated assemblage of cultural, social, and economic issues involved. Guided by Dr. Schuch,the social scientists of this research project, all of whom have research experience in matters related to disability, mean to pool resources in order to plant the seeds of a Brazilian national research network for disability studies that joins practical policy issues with the insights provided by contemporary anthropological analysis, directed toward the well-being of people “living with disability”.