Victoria Reyes-Garcia

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona


Primary Section: 51, Anthropology
Secondary Section: 64, Human Environmental Sciences
Membership Type:
International Member (elected 2021)

Biosketch

Victoria Reyes-García is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB, Spain). Her research focuses on local ecological knowledge systems, including their benefits, drivers of change, and potential contributions to conservation. Reyes-García was born in Barcelona, Spain. She graduated in history from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and then completed a graduate course in Amazonian Studies at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias sociales (Quito, Ecuador). In 2001, she obtained a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida (USA). From 1999 to 2004 she lived among Tsimane', Bolivian Amazonia, where she has long-term research. In 2006 she became researcher from the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), hosted at ICTA-UAB, where she coordinates the Laboratory for the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems in a Global World (LASEG). She has coauthored about 200 peer-reviewed articles and co-edited three books. Her research to study Indigenous and local knowledge system has been funded by two grants of the European Research Council.

Research Interests

Victoria Reyes-García’s research encompasses the interdisciplinary study of dynamic relations among peoples, biota, and the environment. Her research focuses on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, particularly regarding biodiversity management and climate change impacts. She uses a multidisciplinary perspective, grounded in anthropological methods but working in collaboration with ecologists, economists, psychologists, agronomists, archaeologists, and computer scientists, and combining perspectives from a diversity of stakeholders. Her current areas of research include 1) local indicators of climate change impacts, 2) local participation in biodiversity management and conservation, 3) public participation in the documentation of local knowledge, 4) the adaptive nature of local environmental knowledge, and 5) Indigenous peoples and cultural change. Overall, Reyes-García’s research has advanced scientific understanding 1) of the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge systems to discern biodiversity status and trends and climate change impacts, and 2) of the potential of Indigenous and local knowledge systems in environmental management.

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