Grant Success, Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, LAC Course Director and Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme, received an ESRC award for a transatlantic network project between the UK, Brazil, and the USA

Sponsorship: FAPESP (Brazil), ESRC (UK) e NSF (USA)

Citizenship from below, a process through which marginalized peoples self-organize to create citizenship through claiming recognition and rights, is crucial to disaster recovery. Brazilian Amazonia provides an arena to examine how marginalized people---disproportionately affected by COVID-19---are using citizenship to mitigate the pandemic's negative societal effects, supporting a bounce forward to greater resilience in the post-pandemic world. Amazonians engage in forest citizenship, which we define as struggles for recognition from different institutions, enabling claiming of rights from those institutions (e.g. territorial rights). We see COVID-19 as a rupture that forest citizenship can respond to, delivering societal renewal through improved democratic governance and political participation. FORTE assembles a multi-disciplinary team to understand and enhance forest peoples' collective action and transformational change in strengthening disaster resilience. We will advance empirical and theoretical understandings of forest citizenship---placing approaches to citizenship and resilience from Brazil, the US, and UK into dialogue---through a Trans-Atlantic research network supporting on-the-ground improvements in disaster resilience.