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Violeta Cabello

- Position:
Postdoctoral Researcher
Ramon & Cajal Fellow - Main Research Field:
knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, social-ecological systems, water governance, wicked problems, environmental conflicts, uncertainty - BC3 Research Line:
4. Research Line Adaptation Lab - Contact information:
Email address: Violeta.Cabello@bc3research.org
Contact phone: +34 944 014 690 - Scopus Author ID: 55569452400
- ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4393-2433
- Download CV:
CV_VCabello_2301_ENG
Short CV
I was born in a farm, somewhere in the midst of what recently was called the 'emptied Spain'. I grew up between goats and peach trees until I moved to the big city as a teenager. I studied Environmental Sciences in Málaga, an Msc on Applied Ecology in Halmstad (Sweden) and another Msc in Environmental Hydrology in Granada. At that point I realized that all that knowledge was insufficient to understand the basic question of why we keep doing environmental harm. I decided to do a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Seville, in interaction with Ecological Economics teams from the Institute for Environmental Sciences and Technology (ICTA) in Barcelona. During this period, I participated in my first European project, SWAN- Sustainable Water Action. As part of SWAN, I was twice funded to visit the University of Arizona in Tucson (USA). In Tucson I met an incredible group of young interdisciplinary scholars with whom I opened new research horizons and published a book. After 4 years, I could picture what my PhD was about: combining qualitative and quantitative methods in a framework for assessing water management in two arid watersheds at Arizona and Almería. At the moment of the defense, I felt I could try becoming a researcher.
Luckily, I was hired as a 'data-cruncher' posdoc for another European project, MAGIC - Moving towards Adaptive Governance In Complexity. MAGIC was a very intense experience of project coordination and interdisciplinar collaboration. I learnt with postnormal science scholars about extended peer communities and uncertainty. I expanded my knowledge from water to energy and food supply chains and contributed to the development of the Quantitative Story Telling approach, aimed at tranforming narratives on policies and innovations for sustainability problems. Along those years, I joined a training on facilitation of groups and collective processes that was inmensely transformative at many levels. I got pregnant and moved to Bilbao to create a family. I then felt that I needed to shift my research focus towards qualitative and participatory methods.
I joined BC3 in January 2021 thanks to a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. I started a participatory research about the environmental conflict of the Mar Menor lagoon in Murcia (SE Spain) that will continue until the end of 2023. I do not have a predefined theoretical framework in this process but I am working with ideas from knowledge coproduction, transformations to sustainability, sociology of emotions and conflict transformations. I am reading feminist scholars like Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Marison de la Cadena, Remedios Zafra, among others. These encounters are slowly shaping a new way of seeing the problems I care about and my role as researcher. My next years as Ramón y Cajal will think further with them.
For more formal details about this journey you can download my CV below or visit my blog violetacabello.net
Journal Articles
- 2023
- Cabello, V., Brugnach, M. 2023. Whose waters, whose nutrients? Knowledge, uncertainty, and controversy over eutrophication in the Mar Menor. Ambio. 52. (6) 1112-1124. DOI (10.1007/s13280-023-01846-z).
Affiliation previous to BC3
Di Felice, L. J., V. Cabello, M. Ripa, C. Madrid-Lopez. 2021. Quantitative Storytelling: Science, Narratives, and Uncertainty in Nexus Innovations. Science, Technology, & Human Values, nov, 01622439211053819. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211053819V. Cabello, D. Romero, A. Musicki, Â. Guimarães, B. Peñate. 2021. Co-creating narratives for WEF nexus governance: a Quantitative Story-Telling case study in the Canary Islands. Sustainability Science. 16, pp 1363–1374. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00933-y
Cabello, V., Rener, A., Giampietro, M. 2019. Relational analyses of the nexus in arid land crop production. Advances in Water Resources. 130, 258-269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.06.014
Serrano-Tovar, T., Peñate, B., de la Fuente, J. Cabello, V., Giampietro, M. 2019. Structuring an Integrated Water-Energy-Food Nexus Assessment of a Local Wind Energy Desalination System for Irrigation. Science of the Total Environment. 689, 945-957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.422
Cabello, V. Kovacic, Z., Van Cauwenbergh N. 2018. Unraveling narratives of water management: reflections on the first cycle of implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Southern Spain. Environmental Science and Policy. 85, 19-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.03.019
Flores Baquero O., Cabello V., Lara García A., Hernández-Mora N., del Moral, L. El debate sobre el Derecho Humano al Agua en España: la experiencia del Pacto Social por el Agua Pública. 2018. In: The struggle for democracy in Spain: grassroots initiatives to defend essential water services as a common good. WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network Special Issue 5(1):68-88. DOI: 10.5072/zenodo.212688
Pedregal B., Cabello V., Hernandez-Mora N., Limones N. and del Moral, L. 2015. Information and knowledge for water governance in the networked society. Water Alternatives 8(2):1-19
Hernandez-Mora N., Cabello V., di Stefano, L. and del Moral, L. 2015. Networked water citizen organizations in Spain: Potential for transformation of existing power structures for water management. Water Alternatives 8(2): 99-124
Cabello, V., Willaarts, B., Aguilar, M., and del Moral, L. 2015. River basins as social-ecological systems: Linking levels of societal and ecosystem metabolism of water in a semiarid watershed. Ecology and Society 20(3):20. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07778-200320
Cabello Villarejo, V., Madrid Lopez, C. 2014. Water use in arid rural systems and the integration of water and agricultural policies in Europe: the case of Andarax river basin. Environment, Development and Sustainability 16(4):957–975. 10.1007/s10668-014-9535-8
Ravera F., Gamboa G., Scheidel A., Dell’Angelo J., Serrano T., Mingorría S., Cabello V., Ariza P., Arizpe N. 2014. Pathways of rural change: An integrated assessment of the metabolic patterns of emerging ruralities. Environment, Development and Sustainability 16(4):1-10. 10.1007/s10668-014-9534-9
Madrid C., Cabello V., Giampietro M. 2013. Water-Use Sustainability in Socio-Ecological Systems: A Multiscale Integrated Approach. BioScience. 63(1):14-24. 10.1525/bio.2013.63.1.6
Sova Patra Das T., Avila, C., Cabello V., Castillo F., Sarkar D. Lahiri S., Jana B. 2012. Cadmium tolerance and antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli isolated from waste stabilization ponds. Indian journal of experimental biology 50(4):300-7
Affiliation previous to BC3
Romero Manrique, D., Cabello V., and Guimarães Pereira, A. 2020. Alternative water sources as conflict solver in nexus governance. In The MAGIC Consortium: The Nexus Times. Bergen: Megaloceros Press, Issue XI: Governing the nexus. May 2020. pp. 135-136.Cabello, V., Renner, A. 2020. Coupled monitoring of water and agricultural policies: The challenge of indicators. In The MAGIC Consortium: The Nexus Times. Bergen: Megaloceros Press, Issue X: Water-Agriculture Nexus. Sep 2019. pp. 102-104.
Ripa, M., Cabello V. 2020. Water for energy: quantifying the massive amounts of water that go unaccounted for. In The MAGIC Consortium: The Nexus Times. Bergen: Megaloceros Press, Issue VII: Water-Energy Nexus. Dec 2018. pp. 61-65.
Cabello V., Serrano T. 2020. What if healthy diets had a hidden cost? In The MAGIC Consortium: The Nexus Times. Bergen: Megaloceros Press, Issue IV: Outsourcing. March 2018. pp. 36-37.
Cabello V., Hernandez-Mora N., Serrat-Capdevila A., del Moral L. and Curley, E. 2017. Implications of spatially neutral groundwater management. In Poupeau F., Gupta H., Serrat-Capdevila A., Sans-Fuentes M., Harris S. and Hayde L. (Eds) Water Bankruptcy in the land of plenty. Steps towards a transatlantic and transdisciplinary assessment of water scarcity in Southern Arizona, pp. 291-310
Serrat-Capdevila A., Cabello V., Boyanova, K., Poupeau, F., Hernandez-Mora N., Gupta, H., Yang Z., Segura S., Benites E., Yavena R., Coeurdary M. Cortinas J, Khun K., Harris S., Sans M., Curley E., del Moral L., Valdes J., Schneier G., King O., Rodriges D., Salmoral G. 2017. Bringing all the stories together: Beyond the Tucson case study. In Poupeau F., Gupta H., Serrat-Capdevila A., Sans-Fuentes M., Harris S. and Hayde L. (Eds) Water Bankruptcy in the land of plenty. Steps towards a transatlantic and transdisciplinary assessment of water scarcity in Southern Arizona, pp. 401-415.
Affiliation previous to BC3
Guimarães Pereira A., Cabello V., Romero Manrique Lara D., Rosa P., Waylen K., Blackstock K. 2020. Lessons Learned in Interaction with Policy Actors and Institutions, MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Deliverable 2.2, 16 November 2020. Available at: http://www.magic-nexus.eu/documents/deliverable-22-lessons-learned-interaction-policy-actors-and-institutionsGuimarães Pereira, Â., Romero Manrique, D., Cabello, V., Corral Quintana, S., Rosa, P. 2020. 'Lessons learned in operation of the Nexus dialogue platform', MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Deliverable 2.3, 12 November 2020. http://www.magic-nexus.eu/documents/deliverable-23-lessons-learned-operation-nexus-dialogue-platform
Guimarães Pereira, Â., Cabello, V., De Felice, L., De Olde, E., Giampietro, M., Kok, A., Kroll, M., Madrid, C., Monterrey, A., Muscat, A., Musicki, A., Peñate, B., Ripa, M., Ripoll-Bosch, R., Romero, D. Sindt, J., Velasco, R. 2020. – Meetings of Innovation Teams – MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Milestone 11.
Cabello-Villarejo V., Musicki Savic A., Romero Manrique, D., Monterrey Viña A., Guimarães Pereira Â., Peñate Suárez B. 2020. Solving water problems vs. creating new ones: the use of alternative water resources for irrigation. MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Deliverable 6.7, 27 February 2020. Available at: https://magic-nexus.eu/documents/deliverable-d67-alternative-water-sources-innovation
Krol, M.S., Cabello-Villarejo V., Cadillo-Benalcazar J., de Olde E., Di Felice L., Giampietro M., Muscat A., Renner A., Ripa M., Ripoll Bosch R., Serrano-Tovar T., and Verburg CCA. 2018. Report on exploratory applications of the MuSIASEM Toolbox in Quantitative Story Telling for anticipation. MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669), Project Deliverable 4.3. Available at: http://www.magic-nexus.eu/documents/d43-report-exploratory-applications-musiasem-toolbox-quantitative-story-telling
R. Ripoll Bosch, M. Giampietro, V. Cabello, J. Cadillo Benalcazar, I.J.M. de Boer, L. Di Felice, M.S. Krol, K. Matthews, D. Miller, A. Muscat, E. de Olde, A. Renner, M. Ripa, T. Serrano-Tovar, C.C.A. Verburg , D. Wardell-Johnson. 2018. Report on EU social-ecological systems. MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Deliverable 4.2. Available at: https://www.magic-nexus.eu/documents/d42-report-eu-socio-ecological-systems
Cabello V., Kovacic Z., Giampietro M. 2017. Bridging biophysical, economic and ecological quantitative analysis across levels – the case of greenhouse vegetable production in Almeria In: Ripa, M., Giampietro, M. (Eds) Report on Nexus Security using Quantitative Story-Telling. MAGIC (H2020–GA 689669) Project Deliverable 4.1. Available at: http://magic-nexus.eu/documents/d41-report-nexus-security-using-quantitative-story-telling
De Stefano, L., Cabello, V., Hernandez-Mora, N. 2017. Datos abiertos en el sector del agua en España. Observatorio del Agua de la Fundación Botin.
Cabello, V. Principios, objetivos e instrumentos para la transparencia, la participación pública y la rendición de cuentas en la gestión urbana del agua. Ponencia para las jornadas sobre 'Remunicipalización y bases para la gestión del ciclo urbano del agua'. Barcelona, 21 de marzo de 2017.
BC3 Working Papers & Policy Briefings
- 2023
- [Mar Menor - 2] Aprendizajes de un proceso de co-investigación con actores sociales del Mar Menor | Sobre cómo fomentar la participación social Violeta Cabello, Paula Zuluaga
- [Mar Menor - 1] Aprendizajes de un proceso de co-investigación con actores sociales del Mar Menor | Sobre la problemática y los sectores involucrados Violeta Cabello, Paula Zuluaga