Our academic paths have been shaped by collaboration across both countries, Brazil and the United Kingdom, and institutions. Although our doctoral research focused on different areas of International Relations, we shared an interest in Brazil’s international engagement and in how regions often regarded as peripheral contribute to broader debates on security and cooperation.
Several years later, as now lecturers and researchers in Brazil and the UK, those conversations continue to shape our work. Our event ‘Energy Security and Global South Perspectives’, held at King’s College London on Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th July 2026 and generously supported by the King’s School of Security Studies Impact Fund, represented an important moment in our ongoing research collaboration journey.
This two-day event brought together scholars and practitioners to examine how energy security is understood from different regional perspectives, with particular attention to the Global South, the South Atlantic and the changing politics of energy transitions. For us, it was a valuable opportunity to share research, reflect on the importance of academic collaboration, and create a space where different forms of expertise could come together.
From shared doctoral experiences to collaborative research
As mentioned, our early collaboration began during our Joint PhD in International Relations at KCL and USP. Working across two academic environments shaped how we approached questions of international politics and encouraged us to think beyond conventional geographical and conceptual boundaries.
Our shared interests in Brazilian geopolitics and the South Atlantic developed into a broader research agenda examining the relationship between regional cooperation, resources and global order. This trajectory informed our recent article, published in The RUSI Journal in December 2025, where we explored energy cooperation in the South Atlantic region through the lens of the Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic (ZOPACAS). This article, ‘Oil Trilateralism in the South Atlantic: Strategies for Energy Cooperation Through the ZOPACAS’ examined how regional partnerships can offer alternative ways of thinking about energy security, not simply as a question of supply and vulnerability, but as a question of cooperation, agency and geopolitical strategy. It also reflected a wider concern that has guided our research: how can current international relations scholarship better recognise the role of Global South actors in shaping global challenges?
Our research continues to develop in this direction. We are currently collaborating on projects exploring critical minerals governance and energy transitions, while also developing a book proposal that builds on our shared interest in the new geopolitics of energy, power, development, and security.
Rethinking energy security through Global South perspectives
Energy security has traditionally been discussed through questions of access, supply chains, and geopolitical competition. These remain important concerns, but contemporary energy transformations require attention to broader political and social dynamics. Our research explores how the global transition towards new energy systems is reshaping relationships between states, companies, and communities. The growing importance of critical minerals, renewable technologies, and emerging supply chains, for example, has created new forms of interdependence while also raising significant questions about justice, sustainability, and governance.
Countries across the Global South are therefore central to these debates. They are not simply responding to energy transitions shaped elsewhere - they are active participants in defining how these transitions unfold. The South Atlantic provides an important example of this. Connecting South America and Africa, the region has long been significant for questions of maritime security, political cooperation and resource governance. However, it remains underrepresented in many mainstream discussions of global energy security.
A key aim of our ‘Energy Security and Global South Perspectives’ event was therefore to move beyond approaches that position the Global South primarily as a supplier of resources or a site of vulnerability. Instead, we sought to highlight the agency, knowledge and policy contributions emerging from these regions.
Critical minerals, justice and the future of energy transitions
One of the other central themes discussed during our event was the growing importance of critical minerals. The transition towards renewable energy systems depends on access to minerals that are essential for technologies such as batteries, electric vehicles, and renewable infrastructure. Many of these resources are found in regions including Africa and Latin America, making critical minerals not only strategic assets but also issues connected to development, environmental responsibility, and social justice.
Our colleague Dr Clement Sefa-Nyarko (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Lecturer in Security, Development and Leadership in Africa at KCL) was one of our two outstanding guest presenters and shared valuable perspectives on these questions through his research on critical minerals governance and energy transitions. His work highlights the importance of understanding how communities experience resource governance and how more equitable approaches can be developed by considering local knowledge, justice, and state–society relations.
These issues are particularly important as countries seek to accelerate energy transitions while ensuring that new forms of resource extraction do not reproduce existing inequalities.
Connecting scholarship and practice
The ‘Energy Security and Global South Perspectives’ event also created space for dialogue between academic research and professional experience.
Our second guest presenter, Cristina Cortes, brought extensive international experience spanning government, finance, energy, and civil society, including her previous work in the oil and gas sector and leadership of Canning House. Her reflections offered important perspectives on the relationships between governments, companies, and societies as energy systems undergo profound transformations.
Our aim in bringing together different forms of expertise reinforced an important point: energy security cannot be understood through a single disciplinary or institutional lens. This was also reflected in the diversity of our audience, which included medical professionals, representatives from the energy sector, students, doctoral researchers, and fellow academics. Bringing together these different perspectives created a fabulous opportunity for meaningful exchanges across sectors and disciplines.