Dr Grace Souza has been collaborating with the King’s Brazil Institute since 2011, even before starting her doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr Jeff Garmany and Professor Anthony Hall (LSE). She has officially completed her PhD in Political Ecology in September 2017, having also previously received a Master’s degree (with distinction) in Environment, Politics and Globalisation from the King’s Department of Geography in 2011.  

Grace has taught and convened the MSc Environment, Politics and Development programme in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, having previously held teaching positions at King’s College London, both in the Department of Geography and International Development.

As a fellow of the KBI, Grace occasionally acts as a guest lecturer and organise/co-host relevant events in partnership with Dr Vinicius de Carvalho, such as Amazon, the Heart of the world, a talk by Dr. Antonio Donato Nobre (2020), the Hidden Treasures of the Amazonian Kaxinawa Nation (2019) and Beyond Fordlandia: An Environmental Account of Henry Ford’s Adventures in the Amazon (2018).

She is an independent consultant, a Research Officer that the LSE Latin America and the Caribbean Centre, a Fellow of the High Education Academy and the co-founder of CLOSER, a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research group on Brazilian socio-environmental research.

Research 

• Political Ecologies of the Brazilian Amazon
• Drivers of deforestation
• Socio-environmental movements
• Human security
• Ethno-identities

Grace’s research focuses on human security and political ecologies of development, conservation and peasant societies, with particular interest on historical invisibility, agency, and forms of resistance, power dynamics, social policies, payment for ecosystem services, and ethno-identities in Brazil and Latin America more broadly.