Brazilian Favela Communities Provide Insight into How to Improve Research in Low-Income Areas
A new international research initiative is placing community-led knowledge at the center of efforts to understand and address violence and inequality in the urban margins.
Community Resilience in the Urban Margins: Collaborative and Comparative Frameworks for Political Engagement brings together scholars, civil society leaders, and community organizers from Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico, to rethink and reshape how research on violence and citizenship is conducted. The project is co-organized by a team of faculty and researchers at Columbia University and Barnard College that consists of Luna Borges, lecturer in law at Columbia Law School, Nicholas Barnes, visiting scholar at Columbia’s Institute of Latin American Studies, and Eduardo Moncada, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University and the Claire Tow Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College.
The project's first in-person workshop was held in March in Maré, Rio de Janeiro’s largest group of favelas (marginalized neighborhoods). The workshop included favela-based organizations and residents, representatives from Redes da Maré, members of the Rio–Mexico City–Nairobi research collaboration, and students from the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.
