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Reyes García, Victoria
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ICREA Research Professor at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Social & Behavioural Sciences
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Victoria Reyes-García (PhD in Antropology, 2001, U. of Florida) is ICREA Professor at the Institut of Environmental Science and Technology (UAB). Her research addresses the benefits generated by local ecological knowledge and the causes of loss of this type of knowledge. Reyes-García has worked in international research projects since 1996. She lived among the Tsimane’, a hunter-gatherer society in the Amazon, from 1999 until 2004. She has experience in multidisciplinary research, working with anthropologists, agronomists, biologists, economists, archeologists, and computer scientists. Since April 2006, she coordinates the Ethnoecology Laboratory, which catalizes projects that study the dynamic relations among people, biota, and environments. She has more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals. In 2010 she received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council to study the adaptive nature of local ecological knowledge using a cross-cultural comparative approach.
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Research Interests
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My research focuses on local ecological knowledge – how it is transmitted, how it responds to economic development, and what benefits it produces. My work is characterized by: 1) comparative research across different cultures; 2) a multidisciplinary approach working with scholars from disciplines besides anthropology (ecology, economics, psychology, agronomy); 3) a commitment to the collection of longitudinal data: I have played a central role in establishing a long term panel study (99-to date) among indigenous peoples; and 4) a commitment to promote the field of ethnoecology through research and training.
In my previous research I have found that local knowledge is held in common, although integration to the market economy seems to erode this form of knowledge. I have also found that local ecological knowledge provides health benefits to the person holding the knowledge, and ecological benefits to the rest of the world.
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Key Words
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ethnoecology, indigenous peoples, biocultural diversity, local ecological knowledge
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