Dr Dora Carias Vega is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre, Forest Research Institute.
She joined the University in January 2020. She has a PhD from the School of Ecosystem Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, at the University of Melbourne.
Her research focuses on commercial aspects of community and smallholder forestry. She has studied the organization of community forestry enterprises using new institutional economic theory. For her thesis, she carried out fieldwork in Quintana Roo, Mexico and Peten, Guatemala. Currently she is looking at factors that enable commercialisation of smallholder plantation timber.
She has published multiple articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Forest Policy and Economics, Land Use Policy, Journal of Forest Economics, and Journal of Sustainable Forestry.
Research areas
- Smallholder Forestry
- Community Forestry
- Community and Smallholder entrepreneurship
- Community Forestry enterprises
Dora's specialist areas of knowledge include community forestry, smallholder forestry, community forestry enterprises, new institutional economics, smallholder timber commercialization