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Dates: 25-28 February 2025, with 26 February the centrepiece

Location: University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡

UBBI will host a Brazilian Carnaval celebration, Celebrate Amazonia, to celebrate our place on our planet, the potential to stop or reverse climate change, our research and engagement on diverse global challenges, and the Brazilian community residing in the Midlands. Through our Carnaval celebration, we celebrate, adding an important cultural component to Engage Amazonia, offering local ways to engage for our staff, students, and the general public.

Dates:

Applications open: 3 March (Birmingham)/12 March 2025 (FAPESPA) 

Applications close: 12 May 2025

Successful awards announced: 1 July 2025

Funding available to complete project activity: 1 August 2025 - 31 July 2026

Overview

The proposed call will fund joint collaborative research projects in any discipline, up to a maximum of £20,000, over a duration of 12 months. The fund covers research-related expenses directly pertaining to the project, as well as travel (air tickets), health insurance, and living allowances for researchers based in Birmingham and Amazonian institutions. 

Purpose

The seed fund aims to foster research collaborations between academics from UoB and Amazonia to build capacity and advance research on key Amazonian challenges and related disciplines from a broad spectrum of science and humanities.

This includes the themes:

• Global change
• Energy transition
• Green economy
• Public health
• Bioeconomy
• Sustainable development
• Sustainable agriculture
• Gender equality
• Traditional knowledge
• Indigenous rights
• Biodiversity
• Forest restoration

Application

Applications must be submitted by one senior or junior faculty/researcher at a Pará based institution and by one at UoB, both of whom will be named Co-Investigators (Co-Is).

Proposals for the Connect Amazonia UBBI-FAPESPA Collaboration Fund must be submitted in parallel to the UBBI and FAPESPA in English and Brazilian Portuguese as outlined below:

• UoB Co-Investigators must use the to submit the project proposal.
• Brazilian Co-Investigators in the State of Pará must submit the same proposal using the Portuguese application form via FAPESPA’s application platform , which will then be used to monitor project delivery and expenditure for successful proposals.

More information regarding applications can be found on the Connect Amazonia: UBBI-FAPESPA Collaboration Fund webpage.

UBBI and FAPESPA are pleased to assist with academic matchmaking. To help us support you, please complete the short online survey to explain your area of expertise, prospective project idea and the type of partners you are looking for. This information will be promoted on the FAPESPA website and shared with potential academic.

Date: 9 - 24 July 2025

Location: Caxiuanã Forest Scientific Station, Pará

Overview

Delivered in partnership with Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará, UFPA and FAPESPA, the Amazonia immersion will build capacity among undergraduate students from UoB and Pará, including indigenous students from the Brazilian Amazon region, to co-create adaptive practices and solutions to promote the well-being of Amazonian ecosystems and its peoples.

By bringing together and training the next generation of scientists and scholars, the international school will explore existing and new ways of relating to the environment (human-nature relations), that may help counteract and adapt to global present and future challenges such as climate change, environmental degradation, and the loss of traditional knowledge.

Purpose

Using a co-creation of knowledge approach across generations, disciplines, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds, we aim to deliver a unique educational experience that will build global bridges of friendship and train generations of ‘future-makers’ across the Amazon region and the world through an international immersion and a delegation to COP30 in Brazil.

This knowledge exchange and collaboration is across the areas of:

• Diverse communities across the Amazon region
• Global student communities from the UK and the Brazilian Amazon region
• Academia and traditional indigenous knowledge(s)

It is essential for fostering innovation, building long-term resilience, and promoting sustainable development.

Application

Student video essay competition.

Online applications open: 28 February 2025

Deadline to submit online application: 28 March 2025

Shortlisted candidates invited by 4 April to submit video essay by 11 April

Successful candidates notified: late April 2025

Preparatory courses: May 2025

Language courses: May-June 2025

for further details and application information for our Immerse Amazonia Global Challenges Student Summer Programme!

Additional Information

UBBI will provide pre-departure language and cultural training and translation services to support UoB participants. We anticipate a minimum of 24 students on the programme: 8 from UoB, 8 from UFPA and 8 indigenous student participants. We are currently looking into extending the programme to include students from across Amazonia. UBBI will cover the travel and accommodation costs Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ participants. We also invite 4 UoB staff, involved in the Engage Amazonia programme, to participate in and contribute to the curriculum.

Date: 27 July 2025 - 2 August 2025

Location: Manaus, Brazil

Overview

Call for participants in a fully funded workshop (travel, accommodation, food and workshop infrastructure) on modelling Amazonian biodiversity over a week. English will be the official language, but Brazilian students can count on support in Portuguese from the training team and mentors.

Purpose

Biodiversity can respond in three ways to human drivers such as invasive species, land use and climate change: adapt, move or go extinct. This is alarming because Amazonian species, including socio-economically important species such as açai and Brazil nut, already face unprecedented fires and droughts. This requires immediate action to assess how species will fare against combined threats and how to best manage them. Our workshop will train the next generation of ecologists, conservationists and stakeholders on mechanistic range models - the most adequate to understand and predict biodiversity change. We welcome participants working with mechanistic models, Amazonian biodiversity, conservation practice, and stakeholders to learn how mechanistic range models are developed and applied. Participants from and/or working with traditional communities are welcome.

Mechanistic models explicitly simulate underlying processes (e.g., demography) and can also predict abundances. This is crucial for sustainable populations of Amazonian species under a changing world.  Our workshop will train both UK and Brazilian participants on such cutting-edge tools, like and , and on Amazonian ecosystems.

Application

The application form is available on the ISPF UK-Amazonia Workshop webpage

Additional Information

Who can apply? We will have an equal proportion of UK- and Amazon-based early career participants (e.g. PhD students and postdocs), aiming at a diverse group of participants, giving preference to members of groups underrepresented in science and conservation. We welcome female early-career researchers working with female-led local communities (e.g., açaí producers). Female participants will count with a gender and LGBTQIA+ safe space in all activities and with female mentors/role models in both computational and ecological work. We welcome candidates with species data to be integrated into the week’s activities.

More information is available on the ISPF UK-Amazonia Workshop webpage

Date: November 2025

Location: Belém, Pará

Overview

A delegation of Amazonian Immersion students will attend COP 30 as part of an event at the Brazilian pavilion led by the Ministry of Environment, facilitating knowledge sharing, networking, and youth advocacy.

Purpose

In the medium and long-run, this knowledge exchange will lead to informing innovative policies that respect the integration of different worldviews and approaches to nature conservation, resilience of ecosystems, and human wellbeing, based on a plurality of lived experience.

Additional Information

 The University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ will cover the travel and accommodation costs Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ academics and students. Given constraints on access and accommodation, we anticipate that the delegation will involve 3 UoB students and up to 4 staff.

Date: 2025-2026 academic year

Location: University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡

Overview

Funded by the British Council International Science Partnerships Fund, this is a joint collaboration between the UBBI, the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), the Birmingham Institute for Forestry Research (BIFoR) and the Global Health Impact Hub. It will support three fully-funded Early Career Fellowships for researchers from the Legal Amazon/Amazônia Legal universities & research centres to spend the 2025-2026 academic year at UoB, working with an academic host in one of the following research areas:

• Climate Change and Biodiversity
• Conservation and Restoration of Natural Capital
• Health Systems in the Amazon

Purpose

This joint collaboration between the University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ Brazil Institute (UBBI) the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), the Birmingham Institute for Forestry Research (BIFoR) and the Global Health Impact Hub at the University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ seeks to build and sustain medium to long-term partnerships between the University Â鶹¾«Ñ¡ and sending institutions, strengthening research capacity at both individual and institutional levels in Amazonian challenges.

Application

Visit our website for further details and application information for Engage Amazonia 2025 ISPF Early Career Fellowships in Research and Innovation.

Additional Information

Call opens: 15 February 2025; Deadline: 15 May 2025.

Six month to one-year fellowships will commence from September, October or November 2025.

Fully-funded fellowships will have an average value of £60K, covering monthly living stipend, travel, visa and insurance costs, IELTS and NHS surcharge.