26.08.2025
On August 19, 2025, Tatiana Rodríguez Torres successfully defended her doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin.
Her dissertation, titled “Rethinking Agroforestry Scaling: A Complexity-Based Perspective on Actor Networks and Knowledge Systems in Conflict-Affected Colombia,” was evaluated by a doctoral committee comprising Prof. Dr. Marcel Robischon, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Bartosz Bartkowski, Prof. Dr. Stefan Sieber, Assoc. Prof. Dr. habil. Michelle Bonatti, Dr. Heidi Wittmer, and Dr. Claudia Coral, and was chaired by Prof. Dr. Sonoko Dorothea Bellingrath-Kimura.
The cumulative dissertation brings together four peer-reviewed articles published in interdisciplinary journals. Tatiana’s research applies a complexity-based approach to critically examine and enhance agroforestry scaling in Colombia’s conflict-affected regions. It explores the dynamics of regional actor networks, scientific, technical, and local knowledge systems, and farmers’ mental models shaping agroforestry dissemination and management. The study identifies systemic and cognitive barriers for agroforestry scaling, including structural land inequities, weak social organization, non-reciprocal and centralized actor networks that limit knowledge exchange, dominant rationalist paradigms that disregard situated and relational knowledge, and hierarchical, linear mental models that constrain farmers’ adaptive decision-making.
Her findings suggest that efforts for scaling sustainability transformation in agriculture will not succeed if they focus only on the geographical dissemination of sustainable practices through technical adjustments. Scaling sustainable agriculture requires addressing the quality attributes of interventions, such as reciprocity and mutuality among actors and knowledge systems, that enable diverse, dynamic and locally adapted expressions of sustainable agriculture to emerge.
Links zu veröffentlichten, peer reviewten Artikeln:
