Astrid Oppliger Uribe
Doctoral fellow
At IGD until 2023

Astrid Oppliger is Dr. in environmental sciences at the Institute of geography and sustainability (IGD) at the University of Lausanne.

Her PhD research focused on the interface of (environmental) science and policy-making. To this end, she investigated the scientific field of forest hydrology – which studies how water moves through forests and vegetation communities – and its phases of production, circulation and application of scientific knowledge in policy-making. She conducted field campaigns and interviews in Chile, South Africa and Australia studying especially Eucalyptus trees in their native environments and in productive forestry plantations.

She holds a Master of Science degree in Governance of Risks and Resources from the Universität Heidelberg, in Heidelberg, Germany; and a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography from the Universidad de Chile, in Santiago de Chile. She is also holds a scientific specialisation in Sustainable Development, from the IGS North-South programme of the universities of Basel, Bern, Lausanne and Zurich in Switzerland.

The central element of her research is the water resource – also oceanic coasts – and its interaction with its physical and social environment, its governance, management and risks such as the social construction of water scarcity. She has specialised in forest hydrology to investigate beyond the hydrological or hydro-social cycle, how water flows through diverse forests, plantations, land uses and vegetation communities under different geographic and management regimes. She is also interested in environmental governance and their transitions; in inter- and trans-disciplinarity; in historical studies of science, in the production of scientific knowledge, its autonomy, and their contestations of legitimacy.