I am lecturer (assistant professor) in environmental and sustainability policy & economics. I teach students how to design effective, just and efficient policy, and how to evaluate it. I research how to improve policy implementation.
Biography
Aiora is Senior Fellow at the Department of Land Economy, which she joined again in 2020 to coordinate and deliver lectures in Environmental Policy and Economics.
She's Lecturer in Economics at The Open University since 2022.
Between 2017 and 2021 she was full-time Senior Editor at Nature Sustainability (which she helped launch). In 2015 she created the C-EENRG Working Paper Series and edited them until 2017.
Aiora developed and maintains ‘qmethod’ (2014) a package for R statistical language to analyze Q methodology data (a form of multivariate reduction approach to understand perspectives). She has taught environmental policy, economics and methods since 2013. She has published research on a range of sustainability policies, such as environmental and conservation programs in rural areas in Mexico and South Africa, deforestation drivers at large scales, peatland fires in Indonesia, and public policy for sustainable transport to industrial estates.
Her methods' expertise includes R statistical language, Q methodology, econometrics, multi-criteria decision methods, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data visualisation.
Education:
- PhD Environmental Policy & Economics (Cantab)
- MSc Environmental Policy/ Governance (Oxon)
- Postgraduate in Ecological Economics (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
- BSc Environmental Sciences (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Publications
Zabala, García Barrios & Pascual. 2022. From participation to commitment in silvopastoral programmes: Insights from Chiapas, Mexico. Ecological Economics 200, 107544
Phelps, Zabala* et al. 2021. Experts and resource users split over solutions to peatland fires. World Development 146, 105594 (* corresponding author)
Carmenta, Zabala et al. 2021. Evaluating bundles of interventions to prevent peat-fires in Indonesia. Global Environmental Change 67, 102154
Zabala, Sandbrook & Mukherjee. 2018. When and how to use Q methodology to understand perspectives in conservation research.
Conservation Biology, 32(5):1185–1194
Zabala & Sullivan. 2018. Multilevel assessment of a large-scale programme for poverty alleviation and wetland conservation: lessons from South Africa. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 61(3):493–514
Zabala, Pascual & García-Barrios. 2017. Payments for pioneers? Revisiting the role of external rewards for sustainable innovation under heterogeneous motivations. Ecological Economics, 135:234–245
Carmenta, Zabala, Daeli, Phelps 2017. Perceptions across scales of governance and the Indonesian peatland fires. Global Environmental Change, 46, 50–59
Zabala. 2014. 'qmethod': a package to analyse human perspectives using Q methodology. The R Journal, 6(2):163-173
Teaching and Supervisions
2018/2019:
- An Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with R - Trainer
2016/2017:
- Designing effective scientific figures - Trainer
- Basic statistics and data handling - Trainer
2015/2016:
- An Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with R - Trainer
2014/2015:
- An Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with R - Trainer