Luisa Maria Diele Viegas

Biography

I am a permanent professor in the Master’s program of Ecology Applied to Environmental Management and a collaborator professor in the Graduate Program in  Ecology: Theory, Application and Values of the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. I am currently working as a researcher at the University of Mississippi. I am also the president of the Brazilian chapter of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), vice president of the Brazilian Association of Ecological Science and Conservation, co-founder and president of the Kunhã Asé Network of Women in Science and co-founder of the Women in Zoology network, the Climate Forum of Salvador City, Bahia, Brazil, and the Northeastern Network for the Climate. I also collaborate with the Gender and COVID-19 workgroup of the CoVida network – Science, Information, and Solidarity. I earned my PhD in Ecology and Evolution at the State University of Rio de Janeiro in 2019, my master’s degree in Zoology/Evolution at the Federal University of Pará in association with the Emilio Goeldi Paraense Museum in 2017, and my bachelor’s degree in Zoology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2014. I coordinate the Laboratory of (Bio)Diversity in the Anthropocene, where I mentor over 50 students, from undergraduate to PhD, and develop activities under three major lines of research: the first focused on the impacts of global changes on biodiversity and ecosystems, animal macroecology and macroevolution, eco and thermal physiology, and conservation biology, with an emphasis on climate change and terrestrial ectotherms; the second focused on implicit and explicit biases within academia, considering gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, people with disabilities and their intersections; and the third focused on science outreach and environmental education as tools to promote biodiversity conservation and D&I in STEM.