Victoria Reyes García

Victoria Reyes García

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Victoria Reyes-García (PhD in Anthropology, 2001, U of Florida) is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her research focuses on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, particularly in relation to the natural environment, and on the relevance of these knowledge systems to understand and deal with the climate and environmental crises. She co-directs the Laboratory of Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems in a Global World (LASEG), a research group that analyzes the impacts of global change on socio-ecosystems. Her current ERC-funded project (LICCI) studies local perceptions of  climate change impacts. She participates in the Transformative Change Report of the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She is member of the National Academy of Science, USA ( 2021) and the Academie d'Agriculture de France (2022).

Research interests

My research encompasses the interdisciplinary study of the 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 livelihoods and local environments and 2) social responses to environmental changes. My research draws on insights from anthropology and the behavioural sciences to work 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) local indicators of climate change impacts, 2) public participation in the documentation of local knowledge, 3) the adaptive nature of local environmental knowledge, 4) Indigenous peoples and cultural change, and 5) local participation in biodiversity conservation.

Selected publications

- Reyes-García V & Li X 2023, 'Mapping the structure of a cultural domain: Cultural domain analysis', In A. Ruth, A. Wutich, and H.R. Bernard (Ed), The Handbook of Teaching Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods, 64, 308-311, Oxford, England: Routledge.
- Reyes-García V & Junqueira AB 2023, 'Postface', In J.A. Whitaker, C.G. Armstrong, and G. Odomme (Ed), Climatic and Ecological Change in the Americas: A Perspective from Historical Ecology. Routledge, 229-238.
- Reyes-García, V 2023, 'Indigenous and Local Knowledge Contributions to Social-Ecological Systems’ Management. In S. Vilamayor-Tomas and R. Mudarian (Eds). The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. Springer, 7, 71-81.
- Reyes-Garcia V, et al. 2023, 'Biocultural vulnerability exposes threats of culturally important species', PNAS, 120, 2, e2217303120.
- Reyes-Garcia V 2023, 'Beyond artificial academic debates: for a diverse, inclusive, and impactful ethnobiology and ethnomedicine', Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 19, 36.
- Reyes-García V, Álvarez-Fernández S, Benyei P, et al. 2023, 'Local indicators of climate change impacts described by indigenous peoples and local communities: Study protocol', Plos One, 18, 1, e0279847.
- Scheidel A, et al., V. Reyes-García, et al. 2023, 'Global impacts of extractive and industrial development projects on Indigenous Peoples' lifeways, lands, and rights', Science Advances, 9, 23, eade9557.

Selected research activities

Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Ernst Strüngmann Forum, 2023-2026.
Member, Advisory Panel “Climate Actions for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage”, UNESCO 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention. 2023-2024.
Member, Consensus study on Co-Production of Environmental Knowledge, Methods, and Approaches, National Academy of Sciences. 2023-2024.
Coordinating Lead Author, Chapter 5,Transformative change assessment, IPBES. 2022-2024
Member, Scientific Commitee, Earth Network, UNESCO. 2023-2024