Victoria Reyes-García (PhD Anthropology, 2001, U of Florida) is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research focuses on local ecological knowledge systems, including the benefits they provide, the drivers of change affecting them, and their potential contributions to conservation and development. From 1999 to 2004 she lived among Tsimane' hunter-gatherers in the Amazon, where she has long-term research. Since 2006 she coordinates the Laboratory for the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems in a Global World (LASEG, previously Ethnoecology Lab), which catalyses research on the dynamic relations people-environments. She has about 200 peer-reviewed articles and has edited three books. In 2010 she received an ERC Starting Grant to study the adaptive nature of local knowledge using a cross-cultural approach and since 2016 she serves as a Guarantor of ICTA´s María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence.

Research interests

My research encompasses the interdisciplinary study of dynamic relations among peoples, biota, and environments. I use a multidisciplinary perspective (working with ecologists, economists, psychologists, agronomists, archaeologists, and computer scientists) and empirical data to analyse 1) the effects of global change on rural societies, and 2) social responses to environmental issues. My research draws on the insights from the natural and behavioural sciences at multiple levels- from the views of villagers in developing nations to those of policy-makers in industrial nations. My current areas of research include 1) the adaptive nature of local environmental knowledge, 2) indigenous peoples and cultural change, (3) local participation in biodiversity conservation, 4) people and plants, and 5) ethnoclimatology.