Elisabete Maria Melo Figueiredo is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, University of Aveiro, Portugal. She holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences (University of Aveiro) and Habilitation in Sociology (FLUP). Her research focuses on rural sociology, environmental sociology, tourism studies, and risk perception. She is a full researcher at GOVCOPP and collaborates with CESAM and CETRAD research units. Dr. Figueiredo has led significant projects like STRINGS (2017), ShareFOREST (2019), and ALICE (2022), exploring rural-urban dynamics, forest governance, and environmental justice. Her work bridges academia and policy, with over 50 journal articles, 60 book chapters, and 200+ conference papers. She evaluates EU-funded projects (H2020) and serves on prestigious juries, including the Gulbenkian Prizes and University of Beira Interior’s Young Researcher Prize. Active in professional societies, she co-coordinates the Environment & Society Section of the Portuguese Association of Sociology and contributed to ESRS’s Executive Committee (2015–2019). Her recent publications analyze wildfire narratives, green urban infrastructure, and rural food systems’ sociocultural dimensions. Current projects include participatory forest management (ShareFOREST) and air pollution’s environmental justice implications (ALICE). She explores transformative learning in sustainability through eco-villages and rural-urban food networks, emphasizing community engagement and policy innovation.










