Voices of Recovery: Recognising intersecting risks, capacities and pandemic recovery needs in marginalised communities of Latin America (VOREC)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of East Anglia
Department Name: International Development
Abstract
Voices of Recovery is a multi-country, interdisciplinary partnership that focuses on understanding and supporting the recovery needs of socially, politically and physically marginalised communities in Latin America. We will work in places that are highly vulnerable to compounded recovery challenges in the shadow of the pandemic - not solely because of disease impacts, but because its wider social implications intersect with multiple, ongoing risks associated with ethnic marginalisation, conflict, poverty, displacement, environmental degradation and natural hazards.
Our main research emphasis is on the narratives of recovery created by and for such communities. We seek to understand what is highlighted and neglected within public discourse on the needs of marginalised communities, and what these communities themselves value and prioritise in light of their lived experiences. But our proposal goes much further than posing research questions, and will be rooted in participation and action, using creative arts approaches to strengthen people's articulation of rights and needs during and after the pandemic. Our phased research and impact activities aim at strengthening local networks and supporting the existing capacities communities have to voice their concerns, challenge prejudices and realign recovery priorities.
We will work principally in Brazil, Colombia and Peru where we propose two scales of work: macro-scale research across case study territories using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods; and a series of micro-scale studies with specific communities on the ground, based strongly on ethnographic and participatory research approaches. This will be complemented with international scale work, integrating the research findings with wider studies of inequality, participation, wellbeing, intersecting risk and pandemic recovery in Latin America and globally. The proposal spans four key challenges identified in the RRR Call, and closely matches priorities 5.1 and 5.3 in the 'UN research roadmap for the COVID-19 recovery'. It builds directly from our recent work on trajectories and representations of disaster recovery and interlinks with the ongoing collaborative research and action activities generated by each of the partners with marginalised communities.
Our main research emphasis is on the narratives of recovery created by and for such communities. We seek to understand what is highlighted and neglected within public discourse on the needs of marginalised communities, and what these communities themselves value and prioritise in light of their lived experiences. But our proposal goes much further than posing research questions, and will be rooted in participation and action, using creative arts approaches to strengthen people's articulation of rights and needs during and after the pandemic. Our phased research and impact activities aim at strengthening local networks and supporting the existing capacities communities have to voice their concerns, challenge prejudices and realign recovery priorities.
We will work principally in Brazil, Colombia and Peru where we propose two scales of work: macro-scale research across case study territories using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods; and a series of micro-scale studies with specific communities on the ground, based strongly on ethnographic and participatory research approaches. This will be complemented with international scale work, integrating the research findings with wider studies of inequality, participation, wellbeing, intersecting risk and pandemic recovery in Latin America and globally. The proposal spans four key challenges identified in the RRR Call, and closely matches priorities 5.1 and 5.3 in the 'UN research roadmap for the COVID-19 recovery'. It builds directly from our recent work on trajectories and representations of disaster recovery and interlinks with the ongoing collaborative research and action activities generated by each of the partners with marginalised communities.
Publications
| Description | Supporting marginalised communities to strengthen their voices |
| Geographic Reach | South America |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | AHRC IAA Strategic Theme Fund. |
| Amount | £11,983 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of East Anglia |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2024 |
| End | 03/2025 |
| Title | Global discourse review framework |
| Description | The UK team has devised a framework for analyzing the discursive content of academic literature on pandemic recovery. This approach focuses particularly on distilling how 'alternative' (non-mainstream) discourses about recovery priorities are framed in relation to their overarching goals, thematic orientation, target audience and emphasis on inclusion. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | At present the framework is being used solely by the project team, but will be published more widely in outputs planned for year 3. |
| Title | Social cartography |
| Description | Teresa Armijos has led work by the UK team to co-design social cartography methodologies for use in interactions with local communities. This methodology includes body cartographies and reflexive thinking around the impacts of Covid-19, combined with life histories, and has been applied with three groups of women in the Marquetalia and Caqueta case study sites in Colombia. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | As well as contributing to data collection, the reflection and articulation stimulated by this participatory activity will be a key part of the ongoing grassroots capacity strengthening function noted in other entries (demonstrating the difficulty in this project in separating research from engagement activities). However, the methodology will also be reviewed and shared in forthcoming academic outputs from the project. |
| Description | Trans-Atlantic Partnership funding |
| Organisation | National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alarms |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | These three partner institutions submitted a proposal to the Trans-Atlantic Partnership fund together with University of East Anglia. Funding was received under this scheme from 4 funders, including AHRC - which funds the UK team. The joint project is Voices of Recovery, and Roger Few of UEA is lead PI for the whole scheme. Roger and the UK team (Hazel Marsh, Teresa Armijos, Rachel Carmenta and Mark Tebboth) therefore work in close collaboration with the three partners in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, and provide direct support to the case study activities within those countries that are led by the respective partners. This includes field research and engagement support at multiple scales, and this will continue as data collection and engagement activities move into the final stages during the third year of the project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Because this project is a multi-funded partnership with all team members working to the same goals, the partners (led respectively by Victoria Lugo, Maria Eugenia Ulfe and Liana Anderson) contribute in all aspects of the management and research design work of the UEA team. For example, a key coordination activity of the UEA team is cross-country synthesis, and all partners are currently contributing to the development of synthesis activities and outputs, which will take centre-stage during 2024/2025 as the findings and outputs from the country-based case studies become available. |
| Impact | The complex project has primarily been in a development stage with initial collation of information, protocols, plans etc, but shared outputs will soon emerge. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Trans-Atlantic Partnership funding |
| Organisation | Pontifical Catholic University of Peru |
| Country | Peru |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | These three partner institutions submitted a proposal to the Trans-Atlantic Partnership fund together with University of East Anglia. Funding was received under this scheme from 4 funders, including AHRC - which funds the UK team. The joint project is Voices of Recovery, and Roger Few of UEA is lead PI for the whole scheme. Roger and the UK team (Hazel Marsh, Teresa Armijos, Rachel Carmenta and Mark Tebboth) therefore work in close collaboration with the three partners in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, and provide direct support to the case study activities within those countries that are led by the respective partners. This includes field research and engagement support at multiple scales, and this will continue as data collection and engagement activities move into the final stages during the third year of the project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Because this project is a multi-funded partnership with all team members working to the same goals, the partners (led respectively by Victoria Lugo, Maria Eugenia Ulfe and Liana Anderson) contribute in all aspects of the management and research design work of the UEA team. For example, a key coordination activity of the UEA team is cross-country synthesis, and all partners are currently contributing to the development of synthesis activities and outputs, which will take centre-stage during 2024/2025 as the findings and outputs from the country-based case studies become available. |
| Impact | The complex project has primarily been in a development stage with initial collation of information, protocols, plans etc, but shared outputs will soon emerge. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Trans-Atlantic Partnership funding |
| Organisation | University of Caldas |
| Country | Colombia |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | These three partner institutions submitted a proposal to the Trans-Atlantic Partnership fund together with University of East Anglia. Funding was received under this scheme from 4 funders, including AHRC - which funds the UK team. The joint project is Voices of Recovery, and Roger Few of UEA is lead PI for the whole scheme. Roger and the UK team (Hazel Marsh, Teresa Armijos, Rachel Carmenta and Mark Tebboth) therefore work in close collaboration with the three partners in Colombia, Peru and Brazil, and provide direct support to the case study activities within those countries that are led by the respective partners. This includes field research and engagement support at multiple scales, and this will continue as data collection and engagement activities move into the final stages during the third year of the project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Because this project is a multi-funded partnership with all team members working to the same goals, the partners (led respectively by Victoria Lugo, Maria Eugenia Ulfe and Liana Anderson) contribute in all aspects of the management and research design work of the UEA team. For example, a key coordination activity of the UEA team is cross-country synthesis, and all partners are currently contributing to the development of synthesis activities and outputs, which will take centre-stage during 2024/2025 as the findings and outputs from the country-based case studies become available. |
| Impact | The complex project has primarily been in a development stage with initial collation of information, protocols, plans etc, but shared outputs will soon emerge. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | 13th International Dealing with Disasters (DwD) conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Roger Few delivered a presentation at this international conference (hybrid format), in June 2022, for the event entitled 'Dealing with Disaster Prevention and Recovery through Next Generation Social, Economic and Environmental Health and Well-being'. The presentation was entitled 'The framing of disaster and recovery in India: contested representations and their implications', and included an introduction to the ongoing plans for the Voices of Recovery project. The audience included practitioners and NGO representatives working on disaster risk reduction, public health emergencies and crisis recovery. The discussions on the day and subsequently with new contacts have contributed to ongoing collaborative grant proposals with CARE International and other institutions on disaster recovery. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Community workshops and meetings |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Following the initial meetings described in a separate entry, the research teams in this collaborative project have been conducting repeated workshops and other meetings with people in the study communities and local organizations throughout thr second year of the project - all of these activities have functioned both as research (data collection) and engagement (impact-oriented) opportunities, because in this project we do not generally have a functional separation between the two strands of work. The following by no means represent the totality of this engagement: we report here only on the activities in which AHRC-funded (ie UK-based) project members have been directly involved in the field. However, the UK team has been assisting all these activities remotely through regular discussions and emailed inputs. Those activities directly involving UK team members have included: - Discussions of the post-pandemic experience with Guarani indigenous community members in the Atlantic Forest region of Sao Paulo state, Brazil (approximately 10 participants, July 2023) - Discussions with indigenous leaders from community networks in Pichanaki and Satipo, Peru (approximately 15 people, May 2023) - Workshops on pandemic recovery and ideas for strengthening local voices with study participants in Caqueta and Marquetalia, Colombia (approximately 60 participants, March 2023; approximately 35 participants July 2023) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Conference 'Latin American and the Caribbean in Times of COVID-19' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Hazel Marsh participated in the Conference 'Latin American and the Caribbean in Times of COVID-19: Responses, Adaptations, and Recoveries' at University of Toronto, Canada in August 2022. Her paper focused on the project plans and was entitled 'Voices of recovery: supporting marginalised communities in the Amazonian regions of Brazil, Colombia and Peru'. Hazel reported enthusiastic discussion of the project ideas at the event, and networking with other groups working in the region on similar topics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Initial community engagement visits by the UEA team |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Field research/engagement with local communities and other stakeholders lies at the core of the project, but the nature of our work and, especially the socio-political contexts in which we are working requires a sensitive, iterative approach to establishing connections at local levels. During the last several months the country teams with support from UEA team members have been undertaking preliminary work to inform and set up the field activities with communities in the following areas: • Colombia: o Florencia/ La Montañita municipalities in Caquetá; o Marquetalia municipality in Caldas • Peru: o Satipo and Mazamari districts in Satipo; o Pichanaki district in Chanchamayo • Brazil: o Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive-Reserve and the Tapajós National-Forest in Greater Santarém region of Pará; o peripheries of Cametá and Belém in north-eastern Pará During the first year of the project, the UEA team specifically has contributed in the field with these activities undertaken in Colombia and Peru. In Colombia this included meetings in Caqueta with 5 separate community/local groups - with approximately 50 community members, most of whom were women who had experienced displacement owing to conflict, and in Marquetalia with both community groups and with local government stakeholders. In Peru this included meetings with 20 men and women from one indigenous community, with three leaders from another community, the head of an indigenous women's organisation and two leaders from another indigenous people's organisation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | T-AP RRR virtual networking event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Supporters |
| Results and Impact | Roger Few reported on the progress and activities of the project on behalf of the whole consortium to this online Trans-Atlantic Programme event. The audience included representatives of the funding agencies involved in the T-AP, as well as the lead PIs of other projects funded under the RRR Call. Discussions between the PIs led to a number of suggestions for interaction between projects, including joint work which may be pursued during year 3. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |