Two new grants awarded!
British Academy International Partnership and Mobility Grant - £29,886
Dr Katy Jenkins and Dr Hugo Romero-Toledo (COES, Chile)
Developing a participatory approach to understanding socio-environmental
transformations and conflicts in the Atacama Desert, Chile: Gender, indigenous
communities and large scale mining
This project brings together UK and Chilean academics researching diverse
aspects of social and environmental conflicts in relation to large scale mining. The project aims to develop innovative participatory methodologies for capturing
processes of change within rural and urban communities affected by large scale
mining developments in the Atacama Desert region of Northern Chile. The
interdisciplinary collaboration will involve a combination of networking activities,
workshops, teaching, and new collaborative research. It is structured around two
key cross-cutting themes – gender and processes of re-ethnification – and
understanding how these in turn intersect with broader social, political,
environmental and economic transformations brought by the significant expansion and intensification of mining activities in the region. Research will involve the development of community workshops and pilot projects in three communities in the Atacama Desert, in order to trial the participatory methodologies developed in the course of the project.
The project brings together academics from Northumbria, Durham and Newcastle Universities, with academics from 5 Chilean institutions, and is planned to begin in January 2016.
"Proactively Living with Floods: Developing New Approaches to Flood Management in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta"
Newton Fund Network Grant (September 2015-August 2016)
Partner: Prof Dao Xuan Hoc, Water Resources University, Hanoi.
In the context of increasing risks and manifestations of climate change, the construction of large upstreams dams in Cambodia and Laos, and rapid socio-economic change, further empirical investigations of the potential for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam are essential. In particular, further research is needed to clarify the steps necessary to effect a transition from a situation of reactive response to proactive risk reduction. A key strategy in this regard will be the identification and development of alternative narratives by which to live safely and harmoniously with flooding events. The project will bring into conversation established technical solutions and new academic thinking around participatory approaches to make communities resilient. Of particular concern is the reconciliation of competing interests between rural, urban and coastal areas, agricultural and industrial sectors, and different government bureaucracies across the Delta’s provinces.
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