Nirad Abrol
PhD studentResearch Overview
Nirad is a geographer with an interest in the development of education in revolutionary situations and by revolutionary organisations particularly in Africa and the Americas.Nirad’s PhD project explores, using mixed methods, educational resilience to climate extremes in Brazil, focusing on Amazonian school communities affected by severe droughts and floods. The study adopts a Freire-inspired, activist approach, viewing resilience as a negotiated process shaped by social struggles, politics, and local realities.This will involve fieldwork with communities in the Brazilian Amazon, hosted by the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development
Thesis Title
Educational resilience to severe hydrological shocks in the Brazilian Amazon
Thesis Outline
This project explores educational resilience to climate extremes in Brazil, focusing on Amazonian school communities affected by severe droughts and floods. While education is crucial for climate adaptation, it is often disrupted by climate shocks. Existing research tends to portray school communities as passive victims, overlooking their agency in shaping resilience. Instead, this study adopts a Freire-inspired, activist approach, viewing resilience as a negotiated process shaped by social struggles, politics, and local realities. Using critical pedagogy, the project positions schools as spaces for dialogue, action, and resistance. It aims to understand how Amazonian rural schools navigate climate challenges and to develop policy recommendations for strengthening their adaptive capacities. Using mixed methods, the research examines local perspectives on resilience, emergent community responses, and the conditions that enable or hinder resilience-building. Fieldwork in six communities in the Brazilian Amazon, hosted by the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development
Supervised By
Luke Parry, Emma Cardwell and Luciana Mendes Barbosa