Daniels Faculty Assistant Professor Aziza Chaouni and her colleague Guilherme Lassance from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro were recently awarded a 2012 IDRC Canada-Latin America and Caribbean Research Exchange Grant (LACREG). This funding will allow Chaouni and Lassance to lead a comparative study of Rouge Park in Toronto and Guaratiba in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their research will focus on ecotourism as a tool to preserve already fragile ecosystems as well as the social economic conditions of local populations.

In June 2011, the Daniels Faculty initiated a summer workshop program in Rio de Janeiro for its graduate students. Chaouni spearheaded this initiative and organized and taught the workshop in cooperation with Lassance. The goal of the workshop was to compare the waterfront developments and typologies of Toronto with those of Rio de Janeiro. Chaouni's research is a stepping stone for further collaboration between the Daniels Faculty and Brazil, including parallel studios and/or seminars on similar themes.

The Canada-Latin America and the Caribbean Research Exchange Grants program is designed to strengthen international partnerships and consolidate emerging networks among academic researchers from Canada and Latin America and the Caribbean. Its purpose is to support small collaborative research activities which will contribute to the creation, dissemination and sustained application of knowledge in the development process in at least one area of the International Development Research Centre’s thematic priority.