My current research at Umeå University looks at the opportunities for sustainable transformations of established industries, as well as the sustainability pathways of emerging industries in Latin America. Previously, at Karlstad University, I researched sustainable transformations through the lenses of the forest-based bioeconomy in Europe. I conducted case studies in Värmland (Sweden), Lapland (Finland), and Catalonia (Spain), looking to understand the geographically embedded conditions that allow these regions to implement a sustainable bioeconomy agenda. I engaged critically with the notion of sustainability and economic development, calling the attention on the voices and spaces that are overlooked in technocratic approaches and environmental fixes for sustainable development. This research project was financed by the Academy of Smart Specialisation at Karlstad University and Region Värmland; it is carried out in close collaboration with public authorities, researchers from different disciplines and the forestry industry.

My PhD research at Newcastle University (UK), titled ‘Regional cooperation for local and regional development’, argues that regional cooperation is a geographical process that is socially conceptualized and shaped by the institutional environment and uneven development. The research was conducted using a comparative international case study in Colombia and Chile. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to explain bottom-up regional cooperation processes, highlighting, first, the inadequacy of inflexible jurisdictional boundaries and the limitations of pre-existing categories. Second, the processes with which local actors claim ownership of bottom-up economic processes and local development agendas, while negotiating between mainstream economic growth worldviews and alternative solutions to correct market distribute failures.

Prior my PhD, I have worked with two other research projects, one during my master’s degree and one as research assistant, both at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). My master’s research looked at the role of the judicial system in institutional change. By looking at the set of judicial decisions taken by the Colombian Constitutional Court regarding the public policies for victims of forced displacement, I argue that another source of institutional change is judicial activism in a context of human rights violations. As a research assistant for the project ‘developing a national mining plan’, funded by the Colombian government, I was in charge of carrying out fieldwork, liaising with stakeholders (including politicians, public servants and local governments), and coordinating the production of public policy reports.