Valentina Lomanto is a doctoral student at Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) and a PhD researcher in the FORMAS-funded project "Environmental Human Rights Defenders – Change Agents at the Crossroads of Climate change, Biodiversity and Cultural Conservation" supervised by Torsten Krause. She is interested in understanding and supporting the role of EHRD of the Colombian Amazon rainforest as agents of transformation towards sustainability from an intersectional decolonial perspective.

She holds bachelor degrees both in Law and in Anthropology from the Universidad Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia) and a master’s degree in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Prior to joining LUCUS, Valentina was coordinating the Environmental Justice Module of the Masters in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice (ICTA-UAB). She has worked with the indigenous Wiwa community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Colombia) supporting processes of cultural reinforcement as well as with peasant organisations from the Cauca and Cundinamarca (Colombia) in environmental governance and climate change adaptation processes. She has also worked for the Mayor’s Environmental Office of Bogota D.C accompanying urban populations facing disaster displacement.