Ana Maria Vargas Falla

Research Areas

• Sociology of Law: legal pluralism, legal consciousness, and living law.
• Popular Resistance: everyday and organized resistance to law;
• Informality:  regulation of street vendors, informal transport, and workers in the informal economy.
• Climate Adaptation & Environmental Justice: Socio-legal dimensions of climate governance, environmental human rights defenders, nature-based solutions, climate legal consciousness.
• Local Democracy & Governance: decentralization, citizen participation, and the politics of law at the local level.
• Traditional Knowledge & the Amazon: the role of Indigenous legal orders and traditional knowledge systems in shaping climate adaptation and environmental governance.

Recent Research Projects

• AMAZONADPAT (PI): Preparing for the Unprecedented: Enabling local knowledges for effective adaptation in the Amazon. 2024-02303 Financed by FORMAS (2025-2030).
• DEFENDBIO – Biosphere Defenders Leveraging Legal and Governance Tools for Just Sustainability Transformations. Financed by Biodiversa+ https://www.biodiversa.eu/2025/04/08/defendbio/
• ICARUS: Illuminating power dynamics in Cross-scale Adaptation for more Resilient and Just Futures. Financed by FORMAS (2022-2026)
• Co-PI of the research project Unseen Spaces, Unheard Voices, mapping gender social norms in Colombia and Guatemala (Financed by ICLD 2025-2026).
• HORIZON-CL6-2022-COMMUNITIES-01-05 - Assessing the socio-politics of nature-based solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities (2023-2026). https://trans-lighthouses.eu/
• VR project “: Explaining inclusive lower-level urbanization in Tanzania and Uganda” (2021-2023).
• FORMAS project “Everyday forms of resistance to state adaptation regulation: An ethnographic study of responses in informal settlements” (2019-2023).

Theoretical & Methodological Contributions

• Developed a sociolegal perspective on everyday resistance: showing how non-compliance and quiet resistance reshape legality and governance.
• Expanded debates on legal pluralism in contexts of climate adaptation, decentralization, and environmental justice.
• Integrated Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach with sociolegal theory to frame resistance as a pursuit of justice and human development.
• Methodological expertise: ethnography, legal interpretation, policy labs, focus groups, surveys, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Teaching 

I am currently the Director of Studies at both bachelor’s and master’s level in Sociology of Law, with overall responsibility for the quality and development of education in the subject. These are my areas of expertise in teaching:

• Problem-based learning: Apply student-centered, problem-based approaches that connect theory to real-world societal challenges.
• Innovative learning environments: Developed democracy labs in collaboration with local governments, enabling researchers to engage directly with practitioners and policy contexts.
• Creative assessments: Designed diverse forms of assessment beyond traditional essays, including participatory video projects and, more recently, student-produced podcasts.
• Research–teaching integration: Actively connect my research on law, democracy, and climate governance to teaching, ensuring students see how concepts are applied in practice.

Societal Engagement & Policy Impact

• Co-leader of the Transnational Law Clinic: Defending a Living Earth. DEFEND-BIO legal clinic: https://rwi.lu.se/transnational-law-clinic-defending-a-living-earth-defend-bio-legal-clinic/
• Former Director of Research, Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy (2017–2023).
• Policy reports for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other global institutions.
• Represented Lund University at COP29 (2024), Azerbaijan.
• Media outreach: Op-eds in Aftonbladet, Sydsvenskan; animated video on climate resistance (2024).