Victoria Reyes-García - Biography#

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.

From 1999 to 2004, she lived among the Tsimane’ in the Bolivian Amazon and has since conducted extensive fieldwork across Spain, India, Mexico, Cameroon, Indonesia, and Senegal. In 2016, she co-founded the Laboratory for the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems in a Global World (LASEG), which examines the effects of global change on social-ecological systems.

Reyes-García has co-authored approximately 300 peer-reviewed articles, co-edited three books, and supervised 25 PhD students. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the European Research Council (ERC), where she led an ERC Starting Grant (2010 - 2015) on the links between biological and cultural diversity and an ERC Consolidator Grant (2017) to study local perceptions of climate change impacts.

She has actively contributed to international policy initiatives, including the Global and Transformative Change Assessments, of the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES-IPCC report, and UNESCO’s Network for Earth. Her contributions have earned her prestigious accolades, including the Narcís Monturiol Medal for scientific merit (2020), and the Premi Jaume 1 for Environmental Protection (2025). She is also member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2021), and of the French Academy of Agriculture (2022).