Biography
Quentin is a PhD student at King's College London. He also has an MA in Strategic Communications.
Having worked at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence after his MA, Quentin is now conducting research in Brazil through the joint PhD programme in International Relations between the Brazil Institute at King's College London and the International Relations Institute at the University of Sao Paulo.
The research contributes to the field of Strategic Communications and explores discursive agenda setting and contested communication in Brazilian environmental politics and the politics of Amazon deforestation.
First Supervisor Dr Ofer Fridman
Second Supervisor Dr Neville Bolt
Thesis title: Strategic Communications and Bioeconomy Politics in Brazil's Amazon
This PhD project examines contemporary Amazon environmental politics from a Strategic Communications perspective; through a lens of narrative, discourse and strategic competition.
The goal is to shed light on contested communication processes involved in environmental agenda setting and innovative methods of persuasion in this arena of Amazon policymaking and the politics of deforestation.
Quentin employs discourse analysis and qualitative interview to examine the strategic narratives and storylines that are today being produced, reproduced, revised, contested or ignored, as various actors pursue their interests and values in a crowded and competitive discursive space.
Specifically, he analyses the ‘bioeconomy’ discourse – a powerful and emerging idea that has been lauded as a ‘strategic algorithm for the development of Brazil’, yet equally is characterised by competition, ambiguity, and cooperative challenges.
He asks how and why varied political groups – from central government to agribusiness to NGOs – strategically interact with the discourse; how such groups deploy narrative and story in efforts to shape or contest the bioeconomy status quo; and what this all means for our understanding of how environmental discourses are evolving in biodiversity- and forest-rich countries.