Unit: Culture, creativity, social justice, critical thinking, humanities

Research group: TURBA Lab Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory

Email: iruiz_mallen@uoc.edu

Doctor by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with the thesis Educación ambiental y participación un programa educativo planificado por y para los jóvenes de una comunidad indígena y forestal mexicana 2009. Supervised by Dr. Victòria Reyes-García, Dr. Laura Barraza.

Isabel Ruiz Mallén is an associate professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and a senior researcher in the Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA) research group at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). From 2017 to 2022, she was a Ramón y Cajal researcher. As a researcher, her R&I activity focuses on contributing to the understanding of socio-environmental urban transformations through the study of knowledge production and human behaviour related to sustainability issues. In particular, she analyses how different actors perceive, experience, share and engage in learning about sustainability and how they interact with their environment, in order to respond to current socio-environmental challenges.  Her main research interests are transformative learning processes in the field of environmental education, inclusive and innovative methodologies in science education (STEAM), and co-creation in the fields of sustainability and urban resilience. With the JPI ERA-NET project she is currently coordinating through TURBA Lab, COOLSCHOOLS (coolschools.eu), her research activity also focuses on exploring the co-benefits of transforming school environments through the implementation of nature-based solutions in playgrounds and spaces that are better adapted to climate change and provide better learning opportunities to the students.