Postdoctoral Researcher

Letícia Santos de Lima

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, under a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellowship funded by the European Union. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at “Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals” (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain (2022-2025), and an Assistant Professor (tenured) at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil (2018-2022). I hold a degree in Environmental Engineering (2009, UFOP, Brazil), a master’s degree in Environmental Systems Analysis and Modelling (2011, UFMG, Brazil), and a PhD degree in Geography (2018, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany). With an interdisciplinary approach, I focus my applied research on land-water systems, aiming to tackle issues related to the effects of land use & land cover change, public policies, and climate change on rivers, watersheds, and people. For that, I combine knowledge from natural sciences (mainly Geography and Hydrology, with methodological approaches such as environmental modelling and spatial analysis) with knowledge from social sciences (mainly from Institutional Economics, using case study research methods). My work also benefits from the perspectives provided by Science & Technology Studies, Political Ecology, and Ecological Economics. I strive to bring a critical perspective to the social-ecological issues that I investigate, with a particular care for vulnerable communities. I am particularly passionate about science-policy interface issues. My applied research has covered topics such as hydrological effects of deforestation (Southwestern Amazon sub-basins); impacts of disinformation on environmental policies (e.g., Brazilian Forest Code case); impacts of dams on rural populations (Water4Whom project); effectiveness of payments for watershed services; land use change & related policies (e.g., illegal logging, forest certificates).