Dr Antonio A R Ioris (principal investigator) is Reader in human geography at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University. In the 1990s, Ioris worked as agricultural engineer in the southern tracts of the Amazon and, since 2010, has conducted research on development, poverty and agricultural frontiers in the region. His academic interests rest in the political dimension of the interdependencies between social groups and the rest of nature. Most of current research is related to social and environmental justice, the multiple obstacles faced by marginalised groups and creative reactions at different geographical scales. The work is intended to have both academic and more-than-academic relevance and is focused on the political economy of development environmental regulation, the resistance of indigenous peoples, governance and politics.

Dr. Vitale Joanoni Neto (co-investigator) is associated professor at the Department of History at the Federal University of Mato Grosso, in the Graduation and Post-Graduation, Master and Doctorate programmes . Further details.

He has a PhD in History from UNESP and his research is currently focused on development process in Brazil and Mato Grosso in the second half of the twentieth century, including questions related to migration, labour and policy-making. In 2015/16 he was visiting scholar at the School of Geosciences in the University of Edinburgh working in collaboration with Dr Antonio Ioris. More information.

Dr. Pedro Rapozo is  a lecturer at  Amazonas State University. Coordinator of Amazon Social-Environmental Studies Center. His academic interests are in Rural Sociology, State and Development Policies in the Brazilian Amazon. He has conducted research on the Amazon with indigenous peoples in relation to Environmental and Territorial Management, Amazonian Borderland Studies, Socio-Environmental Conflicts and Territorialization Processes.

Latin America Bureau (LAB) is an independent, non-profit publisher, established in London in 1977 and registered as a charity. It has published over 150 books and maintains an extensive website conveying news and the voices of social movements and campaigns throughout Latin America.

LAB is a partner in the Indigenous Brazil Violated project and has contributed:

• the IndigBrazil Website
• a detailed Media Analysis examining reporting of indigenous issues in the main Brazilian print media
• a Covid-19 sub-project which conduct interviews with key-informants in the three study areas, to report on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, government responses, risks and community self-help initiatives to mitigate them.

Sue Branford began her career as a journalist by working in Brazil in the 1970s as correspondent for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Observer. On returning to the UK, she worked for the BBC World Service. She has published six books, including Amazon Besieged – by Dams, Soya, Agribusiness and Land-Grabbing (2018, with Mauricio Torres); The Last Frontier – Fighting over Land in the Amazon; and Cutting the Wire – the Story of the Landless Movement in Brazil, which was awarded the Vladimir Herzog human rights prize. She is writing an extensive series of articles for US environmental website Mongabay.

Tom Gatehouse is a writer and translator who has lived in Argentina, Spain and Brazil. He holds an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge. He has written a blog and articles for LAB and Red Pepper and his translations have appeared in Folha de São Paulo, Agência Pública and Tales and Trails, Lisbon, a recent collection of short stories and other writings. He was the Editor of LAB’s book Voices of Latin America – Social Movements and the New Activism, published in January 2019, for which he wrote the introduction and the Chapter on Mining and Communities.

Mike Gatehouse lived in Chile in 1972-3 and subsequently worked for Chile Solidarity Campaign, El Salvador Committee for Human Rights and Nicaragua Health Fund. He is co-author of LAB books Soft Drink, Hard Labour – Guatemalan Workers Take On Coca-Cola and In the Mountains of Morazán – Portrait of a Returned Refugee Community in El Salvador. He is an editor at LAB, managing the website and commissioning articles and new LAB books.