Before enrolling on the Global Affairs MSc, I was already interested in Brazil and Latin America. I studied History at the University of Exeter for my undergraduate degree, and worked in the political risk sector. The summer before King's, I had even travelled to Peru and Brazil.
So I decided to enroll on both modules taught by Dr Andreza de Souza Santos, director of the King's Brazil Institute - one on contemporary Brazilian politics and society and the other on comparative politics of Latin America. By the end of the course, what was an interest in Latin America and global affairs has become a passion, not only because of the teaching itself but the opportunities I was given to pursue the topics further.
The module on Contemporary Brazil was particularly relevant given President Lula had recently started his third term after Jair Bolsonaro had been in power since 2019. We learnt about Brazil’s transition from a dictatorship to a democracy in 1985, the Lula presidency, the crises of the 2010s and the rise of Bolsonaro’s far-right movement. While these were fascinating in their own right, I found the focus on Brazilian society – including issues of inequality, poverty, race and gender – even more eye-opening given their underlying influence on politics. The module showed me how Brazil is a crucial country to study if one wants to understand Latin America and the Global South, as its issues and opportunities starkly reflect the issues facing the rest of the world. At the same time, it has themes that are uniquely Brazilian. On the module, we were encouraged to think with this kind of nuance.
I was able to pursue my interest in Brazil after the module by attending several events put on by the King’s Brazil Institute. I attended a number of talks during ‘Brazil Week’ including a conference with the Brazilian Ambassador to the UK. I also went to a workshop where academics discussed the advances and challenges of the country’s green agenda.
In the second term, I took Andreza’s Comparative Politics of Latin America module. We began by focusing on the region’s political economy and how countries had gone from relying on exports to attempting to forge a new path through import substitution industrialisation. In seminars, we also debated testing questions such as whether it makes sense to talk about Latin America as a region. Like the module on Brazil, the topics were multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary with an understanding of political, economic and social factors all part of the learning. It was really engaging to learn about a number of different countries and discuss their similarities and differences. One example of this was comparing how different countries have sought to deal with inequality during the early 21st century. Seminar discussions were also lively as students were asked to think like policymakers and attempt to find solutions to the issues being discussed.
The modules sparked my interest so much so that I chose to focus on Latin America for my dissertation. Having studied the role of extractivism in the region’s economies, I chose to focus on the politics of the environment and natural resources in Ecuador, analysing cases of indigenous protests against extractive projects. The King's Brazil Institute held a workshop on mining towns and disaster politics which turned out to be very relevant to my dissertation and I gained helpful insights from attending this.
Finally, I was also really lucky to be offered an opportunity to go to Brazil in the summer of my master’s to study at the Summer School of Brazilian Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte. This was part of a partnership between King’s and UFMG which Andreza told me about and encouraged me to do. It was an incredible experience because I could study Brazil in more depth by actually being there and experiencing everyday life. Truly, there is no place like Brazil.
I am very thankful to Andreza and everyone at the King’s Brazil Institute for what was an incredible year of learning!