Meet the Brazil Team

The Brazil Team at the University of Birmingham exists to offer support for academic engagement and partnership activity across Brazil, promotes new opportunities for collaboration in Brazil, and provides information on funding schemes available to help drive forward our Brazil strategy.

Dr Courtney Campbell, Co-Director, University of Birmingham Brazil Institute

Associate Professor of Latin American History

Courtney teaches, researches, and writes on Brazilian history, particularly on social and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her writing has focused on regionalism, race, gender, international events, abolition, national identity, social movements, and foreign presence in Brazil. Her 2022 book Region Out of Place: The Brazilian Northeast and the World (1924-1968) analyses how Brazilians understood the meaning of belonging to the northeastern region in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Courtney is co-editor of Empty Spaces: Confronting Emptiness in National, Cultural, and Urban History, with Allegra Giovine and Jennifer Keating, and has published articles in Past & Present, Slavery & Abolition, and the Luso-Brazilian Review. Her current research focuses on mothering and other mothering in times of exile. She is carrying out a microhistory of the people and networks that came together to raise Anita Benário Prestes – born in a German women’s prison to the militant Olga Benário Prestes and raised by the family of her father, the Brazilian communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes.

Courtney has well developed links with institutions across Brazil. She has served as mentor and co-I for Brazilian Visiting Fellows from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and University of São Paulo, and has secured funding to work with UNESP and scholars from the Nucleus of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies at the University of Paraiba.

Dr Adriane Esquivel Muelbert, Co-Director, University of Birmingham Brazil

Associate Professor in Global Forest Ecology, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Birmingham Institute for Forest Research

Adriane has dedicated her career to understanding tropical forests, complex and diverse ecosystems that play a fundamental role in our planet. Her research focuses on Amazonian forests and how these systems respond to global change. Her journey is marked by a commitment to collaborative research, policy engagement, and fostering interdisciplinary connections. She has cultivated extensive networks and collaborations with esteemed institutions such as INPA, INPE, USP, UNICAMP, has published major research outputs in Nature and Nature Climate Change and has successfully led large grants via the NERC-NSF scheme with strong Brazilian collaboration. She is co-I on several research grants funded by the Brazilian government and is part of the postgraduate programme at Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso (UNEMAT) where she supervises at MSc and PhD level. Her research strives to create genuine and decolonial North-South collaborations to drive meaningful change to the current environmental crisis.

Adriane’s commitment to bridging the gap between science and policy is evident in her leadership of the UN Science Panel for the Amazon, and her policy brief on Amazon Tipping Points, launched at COP28. She is one of only 10 Brazilian scientists invited by the Serrapilheira Institute to participate in a pilot for the creation of a Centre for Tropical Ecology. She plays a leading role in international networks, including the international tree mortality network and the ForestPlots network, and leads the Biodiversity theme for the AmazonFACE steering group.

Dr Erica Arthur, Head of Global Partnerships, Birmingham Global

Erica supports the implementation of the University’s international strategy, specialising in the development of international collaborations and management of key strategic partnerships in Brazil, Europe and the US. Erica played a leading role in setting up the University of Birmingham Brazil Institute and has led multiple successful funding applications to support the internationalisation of Brazilian institutions. She is experienced in setting up institutional international partnerships, including UoB's flagship strategic BRIDGE alliance with the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and, more recently, the University's Twinning partnership with Ivan Franko National University Lviv, for which she secured UKRI funding. Erica is the institutional Project Manager for EUniWell and was part of the writing team for EUniWell's successful Erasmus+ and Horizon applications. She has extensive experience in student mobility as a former Study Abroad Manager, and as Chair of the British Universities Transatlantic Exchange Network (BUTEX). She is a recipient of the AUA Award for Excellence and is also experienced in Distance Learning partnerships.

Mary Elliston, Global Partnerships Manager (Brazil and North America)

Mary works to support the work of the Brazil team by managing internal funding opportunities, promoting external opportunities to colleagues, and liaising with key partners in Brazil to help facilitate the University's Brazil engagement strategy. She manages the Brazil Visiting Fellows scheme, seed funds and outgoing and incoming delegations to Brazil. Recently she worked on the launch of the Brazil Institute both on campus and in country. Aside from her engagement in Brazil she also works on North America and specifically the BRIDGE partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.