J. David Tàbara, PhD.

J. David Tàbara has 30 years of experience in EU and international interdisciplinary research on sustainable development and knowledge integration for sustainability. He is an independent senior researcher associated to the Global Climate Forum in Berlin and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). He has collaborated with international research institutions such as the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo, the University of Lund and acted as associated Phd Supervisor at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. At UAB he lectured Environmental Sociology, Integrated Assessment methods and public participation in Sustainability Science. He was a founding member and a member of the Board of the Research Committee on ‘Environment and Society’ of the International Sociological Association (ISA -RC-24). Formerly, he was also a lecturer in environmental management and politics at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and also worked for the Institute of Advanced Social Research of the Spanish Higher Council of Scientific Research (IESA-CSIC). He obtained his Phd in the field of Environmental Sociology at the University of Barcelona and holds Degrees in Economics, Environmental Economics and Business Administration. He also holds the Advanced Research Professorship Habilitation provided by Agency for the Quality of Catalan Universities System. He was appointed member of the EU Mission Assembly on Climate Adaptation and Social Transformation for the EU Research and Innovation Framework Programme – Horizon Europe.

He has been involved in numerous international research projects, and within the GCF he was part of the executive coordination of the EU project Global Systems Dynamics and Policy (www.gsdp.eu) launching the foundational Orientation Paper on Global Systems Science (GSS). He also worked for the EU project IMPRESSIONS having defined the concept of Transformative Climate Science (TSC) and ‘positive tipping points’ to address high-end climate change. At the EU project GREEN-WIN he explored the role of win-win solutions that yield both short-term economic gains and climate benefits aligned with sustainable development, with special emphasis in energy poverty eradication and resilient livelihoods. More recently, he investigated the role of participatory Arts-based Research integration methods for sustainability transformations and acted as Principal Investigator at EU project TIPPING+ (2020-2023) exploring the enabling conditions and forces leading to positive tipping points towards sustainability in more than twenty coal and carbon intensive regions around the world. Now he is involved in the TRANSPATH project, exploring transformative pathways for synergising just biodiversity and climate actions
He has published extensively on socio-environmental science and participatory knowledge integration methods, with particular attention to questions of public perception, social learning, communication and public engagement for sustainability. He contributed to the first book on Public Participation in Sustainability Science (Kasemir et al. CUP, 2003) and among others, also to the following books: Making Climate Change Work for Us (Hulme et al. CUP, 2010), and European Research for Sustainable Development (Jaeger et al. Springer, 2011), Reframing the Problem of Climate Change (Jaeger et al., Earthscan 2012) and The Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change (Lockie et al., Routledge, 2013), and Positive tipping points towards sustainability (Springer 2024). In 2009 he received a best paper award at the EU Conference on Sustainable Development Research and also the award for Research Excellence at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.