On the evening of October 6th, 2020, Dr. Andreza Aruska De Souza Santos, Director of the Brazilian Research Program at the University of Oxford, gave an online lecture entitled “The Complexity of Fragmented COVID-19 Response Across Brazilian Cities” to doctorate candidates at Institute of International and Aare Studies, Tsinghua University (IIAS-THU) and other scholars interested in Latin American studies.
In the lecture, Dr. Andreza comprehensively reviewed the statistics of Brazilian cities in dealing with COVID-19, which showed the differentiation and fragmentation of Brazilian cities in responding to the epidemic in terms of time and space. She elaborated the influence and role of government policies, social and cultural customs, national politics and other factors behind such differentiation and fragmentation. Dr. Andreza also analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on this year’s local government elections in Brazil and the changes in the way election campaigns are conducted under the epidemic.
In the Q&A session, Dr. Andreza and the participants had extensive and interesting discussions and answered their questions in simple language. They also exchanged their opinions on how the Brazilian people expect the government to solve the fairness concerns on COVID-19 vaccines and meticulously analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on Brazil’s political arena in the future. She gave examples of specific measures taken by Brazilian slums to deal with the epidemic and shared her experience in how to obtain first-hand information and data for research in the context of COVID-19. The students commented that Dr. Andreza’s speech was vivid and inspiring, which was very helpful to their academic research.
Dr. Andreza studied for PhD in Social Anthropology at St Andrews University and currently serves as Director and Lecturer of the Brazilian Research Program of the Latin American Research Center at Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. Her research interest covers grass-roots politics, informal economy, ethnography, social memory, inequality and social movements. Dr. Andreza is the author of The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil, “Trading Time and Space: Grassroots Negotiations in a Brazilian mining district”, “Risky closeness and distance in two fieldwork sites in Brazil” and other publications.
By: Xu Shuai
