Rosário Oliveira

Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Health, School of Medicine, University of Lisbon, and at TERRA – Associate Laboratory for Sustainable Land Use and Ecosystem Services. She is a Landscape Architect (University of Évora, 1994) with over 30 years of scientific and professional experience. The first decade of her career was devoted to professional practice and consultancy, primarily in land-use planning, sustainable development, nature conservation, protected areas, and cultural landscape management. Between 2000 and 2008, she participated in national and international research projects as a Research Assistant at the University of Évora, where she completed an European PhD in Arts and Techniques of Landscape (2008). Her doctoral thesis, “Integrative Landscape Management: New Parameters for the Implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy. A Case Study in Southern Portugal”, was developed across five European universities (Nottingham, Paris, Arlon, Wageningen, and Copenhagen), fostering a transdisciplinary approach integrating natural and social sciences. From 2010 to 2015, she served as a Guest Professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. In 2015, she initiated a research collaboration with the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa). Throughout her postdoctoral trajectory, she has combined research and teaching across six universities, having taught 18 courses, supervised 16 postgraduate students, and currently supervising six PhD theses. She has authored approximately 100 scientific and technical publications. Since 2020, she has contributed to the design and implementation of four Horizon projects in the fields of nature-based solutions, water-smart management, sustainability transitions, and food systems planning. Her research is grounded in action research and solution-oriented approaches, aiming to contribute to innovative knowledge production in the field of planetary health. Her work integrates natural and social sciences at the environment–health interface and is underpinned by participatory and collaborative research processes. Her current research focuses on two main lines: food systems transitions and nature-based prescribing, framed within the context of the climate emergency and biodiversity loss. These research lines promote transformative processes that integrate scientific knowledge, public policy, and active governance, with positive impacts on human health and well-being, the economy, and landscapes as living systems. She has participated in several public policy design and implementation processes as a consultant to public administrations, including the National Architecture and Landscape Policy (2015) and the National Programme for Spatial Planning Policy (2019). She is co-founder and co-coordinator of FoodLink – the Food Transition Network of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (2019–present) and coordinator of the Food Transition Strategy for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (2025). As both a researcher and a citizen, she considers creativity an essential driver of scientific innovation and knowledge production, supporting healthier and more equitable societal transformations. Her research has been recognised with awards from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2014) and ICS-ULisboa (2022).