Dr Andreza Aruska De Souza Santos
In September 2018, I joined the Latin American Centre as a Lecturer and senior fellow at St. Antony’s college. The LAC houses my enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies is home to my international and comparative research prism. Having studied in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, India, and the UK, I write about Brazilian politics and city governance comparatively.
I lecture the courses ‘Cities and Citizenship in Latin America’, discussing rural-urban migration, informal housing, and urban violence; and the course ‘Politics in Brazil’, focussing on Brazil’s contemporary politics. I also contribute to the course 'Political Economy in Latin America', which I taught in 2019, and to the Research Methods course where I convene a course on political ethnography. As the Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme, I organise seminars and host visiting scholars and students working on a variety of disciplines discussing Brazilian inequalities and democracy.
My research is concerned with the intersections and the dynamics between formal and informal political and economic systems. In my ethnography in Ouro Preto, Brazil, I have observed participatory politics (Policy Councils): who participates in meetings, how do meetings develop, and which impact do participatory politics have in the city. What I have seen is that participating is not the same as voicing concerns, and people may go to meetings but remain silent. Sub-optimal decisions in policy councils are sometimes less costly for participants than confronting established powers in town. Thus, there is a negative relationship between participation and levels of economic dependency. Whereas grassroots politics is a valuable resource to press for urban amenities, it is important to consider which spaces are adequate for effective participation and when poverty mobilizes or discourages participatory politics.
Looking more specifically at mining licenses, grassroots activism is vital because concession is granted, presumably with the input of civil society receiving meaningful compensations. My book: “The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil” (2019), looks at the challenges of citizens’ political participation and how the past of cities is preserved while the future is often threatened by extractive industries. I have also co-edited two books about comparative urbanism, looking at Brazil, South Africa, India and China (Manchester University Press). I also have other papers published at Contemporary Social Science, Ethnography, JLAG, Politics and Gender, amongst others.
Recently, I have joined the CADDE Centre analysing Brazil’s fragmented sub-national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings were published at Science, The Lancet, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Scientific Data, amongst other Journals.
Before coming to the LAC, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Anthropology in Oxford, where I am still involved teaching on Urban Ethnographic Methods. I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews (UK), a master’s in social sciences at the University of Freiburg (Germany), University of KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India); and Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science at the University of Brasilia. I also worked at the Ministry of Social Development, helping to establish the Zero Hunger Programme and Family Grant Programme, and at the Indian Embassy to Brazil, setting up collaborations between these two countries. At the United Nations, I worked on reports on transnational organised crime and violence against women and girls.
Research Interests:
- Urban Governance
- Informalities
- Ethnography
- Extractive Industries
- Inequality and Social Movements
Current Projects:
Countries/Regions:
- Brazil, Latin America, India, and South Africa
Email: andreza.desouzasantos@lac.ox.ac.uk
Website: www.andreza.co.uk
Twitter: @andreza_aruska
Phone: +44 (0) 1865 2-84775
Please visit my Google Scholar profile for an up-to-date list.
Single authored and edited books
De Souza Santos, A. A. & Keith, M. (eds.) (2021) “African cities and collaborative futures Urban platforms and metropolitan logistics”. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
De Souza Santos, A. A. & M, Keith (eds.) (2020) “Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city.” Manchester University Press.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil”, London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Journal Articles
Brizzi, Andrea (…) de Souza Santos, A. A., et al. “Spatial and temporal fluctuations in COVID-19 fatality rates in Brazilian hospitals. ” Nature Medicine (May, 2022).
De Souza Santos, A. A. “Informal practices in politics and society in Brazil” Contemporary Social Science (2022).
Mee, Paul, (…) de Souza Santos, A. A., et al. “Tracking the emergence of disparities in the subnational spread of COVID-19 in Brazil using an online application for real-time data visualisation: a longitudinal analysis.” The Lancet Regional Health (2021).
De Souza Santos, A. A. & Petherick, Anna. “Challenges of Creating Open Datasets about COVID-19 Policies in Brazil” LASA Forum (April, 2021).
Li, S.L. (…) de Souza Santos, A. A. et al., “Higher risk of death from COVID-19 in low-income and non-White populations of São Paulo, Brazil". BMJ Global Health (April 2021).
De Souza Santos, A. A. et al. “Dataset on SARS-CoV-2 non-pharmaceutical interventions in Brazilian municipalities” Nature Scientific Data (March, 2021).
Sabino, E. C. (…) de Souza Santos, A. A. et al., “Resurgence of COVID-19 in Manaus, Brazil, despite high seroprevalence". The Lancet (Jan 2021).
Buss, L. F., Prete, C. A., Abrahim, C. M., (...) De Souza Santos, A. A., et al. (2020). Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic. Science.
Darlan da Silva Candido, Ingra Morales Claro, Jaqueline Goes de Jesus (…) De Souza Santos, A. A., et al. (2020) “Evolution and epidemic spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil”. Science.
William Marciel de Souza, Lewis Fletcher Buss, Darlan da Silva Candido (…) De Souza Santos, A. A., et al. (2020) “Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the early phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil”. Nature Human Behaviour.
De Souza Santos, A. A. & Payne, L. (2020) “The right-wing backlash in Brazil and Beyond”. Politics and Gender.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2020). “Governance challenges in Latin American cities“. Cell Press.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “Trading time and space: grassroots negotiations in a Brazilian mining district”. Ethnography.
De Souza Santos, A. A. & Iamamoto, S. (2019) “The difficult legacy of mining in past and contemporary Potosí and Ouro Preto”. Journal of Latin American Geography.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2018) “Risky closeness and distance in two fieldwork sites in Brazil”. Contemporary Social Science.
Book Chapters
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2021) “From participation to silence: Grassroots politics in contemporary Brazil”. In Hatzikidi, K & Dullo, E. (eds.) A Horizon of (im)possibilities: A chronicle of Brazil’s conservative turn. London: ILAS.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2019) “Risky closeness and distance in two fieldwork sites in Brazil”. In Abdelhalim, J & Marks, Monique (eds) Identity, agency and fieldwork methodologies in risky environments. Routledge.
De Souza Santos, A. A. and Tom Hulme (2019) “Cultural Marginality and Urban Place Making: the Case of Leicester and Ouro Preto”. In Cupples, J. & T. Slater (eds.) Producing and contesting urban marginality: Interdisciplinary and comparative dialogues. Rowman & Littlefield International.
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2013) “Chandigarh and Brasilia: utopias or dystopias?” in Fulquet, G. Janz, C., Kumar, A. (eds.) Analyzing Globalisation in the 21st Century. Argentine: FLACSO, pp. 163-174.
Book Reviews
De Souza Santos, A. A (2020) Review of the book “An Economic and Demographic History of São Paulo” by Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein. Urban History Journal
De Souza Santos, A. A (2018) Review of the book “The limits to citizen power: Participatory democracy and the entanglements of the state” by Victor Albert. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
De Souza Santos, A. A. (2014) Review of the book “Space and Society in Central Brazil: A Panará Ethnography” by Elizabeth Ewart. The London School of Economics and Political Science Review of Books.