BNRGI member Shelly Annette Biesel was a 2021 finalist for the Anthropology and Environment Society's prestigious Rappaport Prize for up and coming environmental anthropology scholars. Her work—completed in collaboration with community partners in Cabo de Santo Agostinho and Ipojuca, Pernambuco—investigates the affective, emotional political ecologies of environmental loss among predominately Afro-Brazilian traditional communities.
By linking environmental grief to intersectional structural inequalities in Brazil, Biesel builds important conceptual bridges between the emerging concept of ‘ecological grief’ (or how societies mourn their rapidly changing environments) and environmental justice movements and scholarship in Brazil. You can read her full write-up on the Anthropology and Environment Society blog: Engagement.
