Orfalea Cluster Forums on Environmental Justice & Reimagining Social Data

Environmental Justice & Climate Justice Studies Research Cluster

Noa Cykman, Department of Sociology

“Living with Cacao in Bahia, Brazil”

• Advancing the transition of food systems towards regenerative models is indispensable in order to conserve, as well as to repair and enhance local ecosystems and global biomes. Noa Cykman’s research focuses on Terra Vista, a Brazilian community settled by the MST that cultivates cacao and other food crops through agroforestry. Traditional in southern Bahia, the cabruca cacao system can integrate more than 250 native species, being vital for the conservation of the region's Atlantic Forest. Noa aims to understand how this settlement integrates ecosystem restoration, human liberation, and communal sovereignty.

• Noa Cykman is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), a Fulbright/CAPES scholar and an Education for Nature fellow at WWF (World Wildlife Fund). In her research, she seeks to understand how the struggles for ecological restoration, human liberation and community sovereignty are integrated in Terra Vista, an MST settlement that stands out for its practice of agroecology in the cacao region of Bahia, Brazil. A critical, decolonial and interdisciplinary perspective guides her work, aiming to discuss and prefigure agrarian reform and regenerative food systems.

Russell Nylen, Department of Anthropology

“Voices of Resistance: Educating & Inspiring Future Environmental Activists”

• I will be giving a presentation that showcases segments of two interviews I conducted over Zoom with two educators in Minas Gerais Brazil that have engaged their students with the topic of bauxite mining occurring in their region. In this presentation, I’ll give a brief introduction to the conflict in the region and then transition the focus to some clips from the interviews I held with the educators and even some students. The conversation revolves around the work that they do, the role they see themselves playing in the resistance against the mining project, ideal visions for the future, and messages that they have for educators abroad looking to engage their students with activism around local issues. This ties in to a larger project of mine, that seeks to understand how a coalition of various people with different backgrounds and ways of interpreting the natural environment can create new visions and possibilities for the future. How does this conflict proposed by the mining corporation create new forms of solidarity between people and what new forms of resistance and ways of living on the land are imagined through these solidarities?

• Russell Nylen (he/him/they) is a 2nd year sociocultural anthropology graduate student researching a conflict of land-use in the Zona da Mata (forested zone) region of Minas Gerais Brazil due to a proposed bauxite mining project. By studying this conflict, he looks to investigate the ways various groups within the conflict (mining corporations, conservationists, farmers, etc.) frame the conflict within their discourses and how variations in the way  people perceive the environment and their position within it sit at the core of the conflict. From this, he looks at actions from the mining corporation to claim the land and the various forms of resistance against the mining project to see the ways politics is performed to ensure a desired outcome. How do people navigate this conflict (physically and mentally) and how might this conflict result in new forms of political action and visions for a future? While the project is still at its initial phase, Russell seeks to conduct his research project through a more collaborative process called community-based participatory research. In this way, he includes community members throughout the research project to guide it and incorporate their voices in a way that is less extractive and more empowering. This pushes for a decolonization of research methods to be less extractive and more inclusive. In this way, the methods of conducting ethnographic research connect to the topic of the research as people search for forms of mineral extraction that can be less detrimental to the surrounding ecological and social environments.

Reimagining Social Data and the Archive 

Yuri Fraccaroli, Department of Feminist Studies

“Archivo vivo! An Ethnography of the Archive: Latin American Sex and Gender Community Archives”

• Their research interests are situated in the following areas: Gender and Sexuality studies, Queer/Trans of Color Critique, Latin American Studies, Critical Race Theory and Black Studies. In addition to their academic roles, Yuri is an active member of Acervo Bajubá, an LGBT+ community archive in São Paulo. Within this vibrant community, they function as an educator, artist, and researcher, harnessing various modes of expression and inquiry to advance the archive's mission. Yuri's artistic endeavors include charcoal drawing, and they actively explore alternative research methodologies involving the arts and creative writing.

• Yuri (they/them) is a Graduate Student at the Feminist Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, currently working as a Teaching Assistant within the department. Recently, they also were Research Assistant at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies (Summer, 2023). Yuri's academic pursuits revolve around the exploration of Latin American Sex/Gender Community-Based Archives for their PhD. They hold a BA in Public Policies Management from the University of São Paulo, a BA in Public Administration from the University of Vigo, and an RMSc in Social Psychology from the University of São Paulo. Their research interests are situated in the following areas: Gender and Sexuality studies, Queer/Trans of Color Critique, Latin American Studies, Critical Race Theory and Black Studies. In addition to their academic roles, Yuri is an active member of Acervo Bajubá, an LGBT+ community archive in São Paulo. Within this vibrant community, they function as an educator, artist, and researcher, harnessing various modes of expression and inquiry to advance the archive's mission. Yuri's artistic endeavors include charcoal drawing, and they actively explore alternative research methodologies involving the arts and creative writing.

Travis Candieas, Department of Education

“The role of social capital in Brazilian higher education policy”

• Affirmative action has been a prominent global social policy issue, particularly in the higher education sector and more recently Brazil. This research highlights a quantitative analysis focused on social capital in the context of Brazilian higher education policy. Analyses confirm that discussions focused on global consciousness and activism can be systematically generalized into two factors for Brazilian students enrolled in social science programs within institutions of higher education. The statistically significant two factor structure provides compelling evidence of social structures that underlie policy environments such as that of affirmative action. Such findings provide comparative analyses for how institutions of higher education can implement structures that promote social capital development and exchange internationally.

• Travis Candieas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. Candieas's research focuses on education policy and institutional quality with an emphasis in quantitative methods in the social sciences. His current projects include evaluating education and workforce development programs, longitudinal outcomes of intervention programs, and student sense of belonging internationally across institutions of higher education. His academic work has been presented at the American Evaluation Association annual conference, and his technical reports have been used for regional planning and implementation of California public policy initiatives.