Team
Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
Principal Investigator
Beatriz Rodríguez -Labajos (PhD in Environmental Sciences, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is a distinguished researcher at UPF's Department of Political and Social Sciences. Originally from Barcelona, she has lived for extended periods of time in Latin America and the US.
Her research work focuses on how socioenvironmental transformations advance while remaining inclusive. For years, this puzzle has motivated her work, collaborating with underrepresented people who resist unequal ecological distribution effectively in marginalized areas of Latin America, South East Asia, Europe and the US. Her work is rooted in critical social sciences, placing ecological economics and political ecology at the forefront in tackling the challenge of global environmental injustice. Currently she is focused on bridging the gap between social environmental sciences and information and communication technologies, when it comes to explaining the deployment of technological innovations vis-à-vis situated perspectives on environmental change.
Constanza Monterrubio Solís
Postdoctoral Researcher
Originally from Mexico, Constanza is a postdoctoral researcher at the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center. She holds a PhD in Biodiversity Management, a Masters in Conservation Biology from the University of Kent (UK), and a Bachelors in Biology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Her work is rooted in the intersection of biodiversity conservation and community-based natural resource management. Her doctoral research focused on the interplay between Indigenous governance systems and external environmental regulations in Oaxaca, Southern Mexico. Constanza’s expertise extends to Chile, where she was a postdoctoral researcher at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Campus Villarrica, within the CIIR-CEDEL. Her research there explored the role of family-owned indigenous and campesino homegardens in preserving agrobiodiversity, biocultural memory and food practices, and their contribution to resilience in local food systems amid global pressures. Throughout her career, Constanza has worked closely with indigenous and rural communities focusing on biocultural heritage conservation and community-led initiatives. Her research delves into agrobiodiversity, social-ecological resilience, and the continuity of biocultural memory in the face of environmental and social challenges.
Carolina Gallardo
Project Manager
She is responsible for the administrative and financial management of the grant and research team, including budget planning and monitoring, resource allocation, HR recruitment and selection processes, staff hiring, reporting, and compliance with ERC rules. She supports the Principal Investigator in shaping and implementing the project's strategy by coordinating research activities, logistics, fieldwork and dissemination efforts. Her role includes facilitating effective internal and external communication, delivery of scientific and technical outputs, and ensuring adherence to ethical and quality standards. As the central liaison between University departments and services, Carol fosters collaboration and provides the operational support necessary for a successful execution of the project.
Clara Vázquez Pulido
Communication Manager
Clara Vázquez holds a degree in Journalism from Blanquerna – Ramon Llull University – and a postgraduate degree in Design from IDEP Barcelona. A native of Barcelona, she brings over a decade of experience in communication, design, dissemination and advocacy across higher education, the third sector and media. Prior to joining UPF, she served as Head of Communication at CCAR (Comissió Catalana d'Acció pel Refugi), where she led the institutional communication and the advocacy campaigns on human rights. She also worked at the International Department of the Universitat de Barcelona and as a journalist for organisations such as the European Commission or Diversa Audiovisual.
Anna Schlingmann
DB&GIS specialist
Anna Schlingmann (PhD in Environmental Sciences, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is in charge of creating and maintaining the project’s database and supporting data analysis at a global scale. Originally from Germany, she has been based in Barcelona for several years.
Over recent years, her research has become increasingly interdisciplinary by acknowledging the diverse interrelations within social-ecological systems. Most of her work relates to climate justice, sustainability, resilience, agrobiodiversity, and biocultural diversity. During her doctoral thesis she assessed climate change impacts and adaptation in Indigenous and local communities around the world. By combining different knowledge and value systems, she examined crucial socio-economic, cultural, and environmental drivers and barriers that support or impede the implementation of adaptation measures. She worked with local communities in Senegal and Argentina.
Cecilia Gebruers
Postdoctoral Researcher (MSCA)
Cecilia Gebruers received a law degree from the University of Buenos Aires and an LLM and JSD from Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University. Since 2021 she has been a researcher at CONICET, the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. She is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University - Universitat Pompeu Fabra Public Policy Center.
Her research work combines critical legal theory and human rights activism with the notion of intersectionality. It draws on theoretical elements of new materialisms and empirical work based on ethnographies and case studies to operationalize the legal implications of intersectionality on property and land rights, extractivism and water conflicts.
Cecilia’s theoretical work is grounded in practice. For nearly fifteen years she has worked as a human rights advocate with a variety of local and global civil society organizations, such as ELA- the Latin American Team for Gender Justice, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Human Rights Clinic at Cardozo Law School, and as clinical professor at the Law School of Torcuato Di Tella University developing cases and projects that promote imaginative engagements with the law.
Séréna Aupoix
PhD Student
Having graduated with a Masters in Sustainable Development, specialising in Political Ecology, from Utrecht University, Séréna Aupoix's research aspires to delve into the roots of socio-ecological, political, and structural injustices. Her thesis explored the Chlordécone crisis in Martinique, tracing its roots by thinking with Black feminism, decolonial ecologies, and plantation geographies, whilst also highlighting the plural forms of resistance practices, such as Créole gardening and Art Mawon, that materialised as continuing responses.
Séréna Aupoix is now a PhD student in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a Research Fellow for the DIVERSE project. Her research within the project will focus on Catalunya and Madagascar, exploring environmental justice and digital resistance through relational and decolonial thinking.
Inês Conde
PhD Student
Inês Conde holds a bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from King’s College London and a master's degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics.
Her main research interests sit at the intersection between environmental justice, social movements, indigenous storytelling and the indigenous creative economy. Her research as part of the DIVERSE project will focus on the Americas region, and she will be conducting fieldwork in Brazil and the U.S.
Srilaxmi Nayak
PhD Student
Srilaxmi comes from India. Holding a master's degree in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from WU Vienna and a bachelor's in Communicative English, Political Science and Economics, her research focusses on land conflicts and dispossession, indigenous and tribal activism, (neo-)colonialism, and political economy of inequalities. She has also worked on tourism, sustainabile industries, and culture.
As part of her dissertation, she will be studying Grassroots Organisations working on environmental justice in India and Australia. She will specifically look at how these communities engage with, or do not engage with, digitalisation processes to advance the goals of the organisation, and how these process further affect intersectional inequalities in the context of digitalisation.
Alex Velert
PhD Student
Alex Velert is a PhD student that holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Public Administration (with honors) from the Universitat de València and a master's degree in International and European Studies from the same institution. He has also completed academic stays at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the University of Oklahoma.
Alex’s main research interests focus on the governance of planned relocations. His work explores the social and political challenges of climate-driven planned relocations, an emerging form of adaptation.