Read more: New Faculty: Yesenia Barragan--History Department

• 
• Person Association: Mitchell, Sean T.

"All of these pressures are looking harder and harder for Bolsonaro to shake, and it’s happening against the shadow of Covid-19 and high unemployment and inflation. “The political scenario is worsening for him, so he’s trying to figure out some way to hold on to power to protect himself,” Sean T. Mitchell, an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, told me last month."

• 
• Person Association: Schneider, Laura

Congratulations to Professor Schneider for her recent promotion.

Laura Schneider’s research intersects land systems science and biogeography.  Her research focuses on understanding changes in tropical landscapes using a socio-ecological systems approach. She is interested in measuring forest responses following environmental disturbances, monitoring and modeling tropical deforestation and re-growth, and mapping forest dynamics. Her research shows how tropical secondary forests are resilient to disturbances, and how rural landscapes are shaped by land management practices occurring under particular ecological contexts. It also demonstrates the importance of methods linking field data to regional characterizations using remotely sensed data in assessing ecosystem services.

Dr. Schneider’s ongoing projects include Environmental Disturbances in Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, supported by a grant from the Moore Foundation; and The Spontaneous Spread of Silvopastoral Landscapes in the Ecuadorian Amazon, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation through the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program. Recently, Laura held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award in Biodiversity and Sustainable Development. Her Fulbright research focuses on landscape change in the Colombian Orinoco: the effects of armed conflict on deforestation in protected areas and the effects of the peace treaty reached in 2016 on land consolidation programs in the region.

For More Information on Laura Schneider

• 
• Person Association: Ferreira, Priscilla

Professor Ferreira recently joined the Departments of Geography and Latino and Caribbean Studies. She works on the intersection of class, race, and gender in Latin American societies, particularly in Brazil, and resulting geographical patterns of racialized uneven economic geographies. She has worked organizing communities of color inside and outside of academia, over the past twenty years and collaborated in a number of popular education projects. 

Her current research works with Black women residents in majority-Black geographies in Rio de Janeiro to map Black community economies, and to understand how they conceive of solidarity economics and enact grassroots urban planning and community-driven development initiatives.  She is currently working on a book manuscript titled "City of God(desses): Afro-feminist urban marronage in the face of the Racial Capitalism” that centers women-led community economies around struggles for housing and childcare in the favela City of God, Rio de Janeiro. 

Prof. Ferreira recently held a Postdoctoral Fellow in Black and Latinx Studies in the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies and the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of  Texas in Austin (2019-2021).  Her MA and PhD in Geography are from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).  Her BA in the Sociology of Ethnic Studies is from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

Learn more about Priscilla Ferreira