Avellán, Tamara

Tamara Avellán is a Visiting Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS within the Nature, Climate and Health Cluster. Here, she will mainly concentrate on Exploring Regional Trends: Nature-Based Solutions, Water Security, and Climate Adaptation in the EU and the Amazon Region. In addition, collaboration with the WATERAGRI project (https://wateragri.eu/ ) is foreseen to facilitate the creation of two policy briefs to fortify water security and advocate for sustainable agricultural practices in the EU. This collaboration will address pressing environmental concerns while promoting robust agricultural and water management methodologies contributing to the European Water Directive and EU Nature Restoration Law and related agenda’s.

Tamara Avellán is sustainable water specialist with a background in biology-limnology, physical geography and wastewater management. Her 20 year research career revolves around the Water-Energy-Food(-Ecosystem) Nexus, nature-based solutions for pollution control such as constructed wetlands, and sustainable water and wastewater management including unconventional water use and wastewater reuse. While her background is natural science based she has a major interest in participatory research practices to achieve local impact and bridge the science-policy gap. She has developed stakeholder engagement practices for Nexus research and knowledge co-creation strategies for sustainable water management projects.

Tamara Avellan holds an MSc in biology from Wayne State University, a PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,  and a Habilitation from the Technische Universität Dresden. She helped in the establishment of the Global Framework for Climate Services Office at the World Meteorological Organization (2011-2015), and led an interdisciplinary group of early career researchers as the Academic Officer of the Water Unit at UNU Flores in Dresden (2016-2019). She currently is a Docent at the University of Oulu, Finland, a self-employed researcher in Germany, and a passionate advocate for environmental education projects in Uruguay. She is involved in multiple EU H2020 research projects where she leads the stakeholder engagement, policy impact and sustainability assessment processes.

Tamara Avellan is a long standing member of the International Water Association and the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity and she is a certified Project Manager through the Project Management Institute since 2013. She has served on a multitude of institutional panels and boards, including UN Water and has published over 30 research articles and book chapters and served as reviewer to a number of international journals.