Research

Research activities

I am a social-environmental scientist with a research trajectory in environmental governance, social-ecological systems, knowledge co-production and water issues characterized by contestation between agricultural and environmental narratives. From 2021-2023, in close collaboration with Paula Zuluaga, I conducted a participatory research project called SharedDialogues within the conflict over eutrophication of the Mar Menor lagoon (Murcia, Spain), the first ecosystem in Europe becoming a legal person. I first analysed how the conflict is manifested in public controversies, uncertainty, socio-political and territorial polarization and associated collective emotions, and how all these processes hamper the possibilities for effective public action. Inspired by a Transformation Lab in Xochimilco (Mexico), we organised a series of collective spaces for inquiry and reflection on the most controversial and critical aspects of the Mar Menor problem. To narrate some bits of this intense dialogue process, together with visual artist Josune Urrutia we co-created 23 visual stories that speak of loss and pain for the lagoon, of caring efforts towards its protection and of the daily contradictions people inhabit in their relation to it.

In 2024, I started the IntegrateNbS DUT project on urban transformation and climate change adaptation. We explore how to curate spaces for co-design of nature based solutions, playing special attention on equity when transforming urban environments. With my colleague Violeta Furlan, we are working on Uretamendi, a fascinating peripheral highland of Bilbao, self-constructed during the 50-60s by migrants that came from other Spanish regions to work in the burgeoning basque industries. We are also developing a framework for evaluating the transformative potential of co-creation processes. For this purpose we are learning from the experience of EbroResilience, an ambitious and innovative flood governance strategy shifting from a ‘control-of-nature’ towards a ‘co-habitation with the river’ paradigm.

During 2024, I co-edited a book focused on how interdisciplinarity can advance European Climate Policy and a special issue in Pensamiento al Margen, unfolding the idea of a ‘Just Water Transition’ within the highly conflictive Spanish hydro-politics (in Spanish). I am coordinating another special issue in Ecology&Society exploring intersections between knowledge co-production and environmental conflicts, where I recently published my first sole-author paper analyzing the knowledge co-production process in the Mar Menor.

As of 2025, I feel in a hinge moment concerning my research. I am applying for (too many) research proposals to continue working in the Mar Menor while continuing collaboration with colleagues at the ehColab in Murcia. I want to explore how the new participatory governance system to safeguard the Righs of Nature in the lagoon emerges and evolves, hopefully not in confrontation with the new regional governance structure. I am visiting the Stockholm Resilience Centre for three months while trying to write a paper on the Mar Menor as an affective assemblage. Theoretically, I keep diving in feminist STS and post-humanisms literatures, to me a radical new paradigm for the kind of research we need now.

New research lines

• Conflict-sensitive knowledge co-production
• Societal polarisation in environmental topics
• Affective turn in sustainability transformations

Previous research lines

• Water governance
• Water-Food-Ecosystem nexus
• Societal metabolism
• Science for governance & actionable knowledge
• Narrative research

Active projects

• Shared Dialogues
• SSH Centre
• ANT Mental Health
• Integrate NbS – Fulfilling the transformative potential of Nature Based Solutions.