About

Education

• PhD River Restoration and Management
  • Universidade de Lisboa/Portugal
  • 2018
• MSc Environmental Impact Assessment
  • University of East Anglia/United Kingdom
  • 2003
• BSc Environmental Sciences
  • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid/Spain
  • 1998
• BA English Studies
  • Univ. Nacional Educación a Distancia/Spain
  • 2020

20 years of river management and restoration practice, in public and private organisations.

María Díaz Redondo’s career has developed a consistent line of research on river evaluation and restoration. She is the corresponding author of seven articles, and co-author of two articles in peer-reviewed journals, has published a book and three chapters in a book, and has delivered 15 presentations (oral and poster) at international conferences. Prior to her doctoral work she led a total of 25 projects, plans and programmes on river and wetland restoration at the local, regional, national and international level.

María completed her PhD in River Restoration and Management at the University of Lisbon (Portugal), with a grant awarded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Her thesis complied with the procedures of an European Thesis. Following her thesis defence (October 2018), she was awarded the highest qualification: Pass with Distinction.

In her doctoral training (2014-2018), developed in Portugal, Spain, Germany, France and Austria, she was a member of the scientific staff of the Auen-Institut (Institute of Floodplain Ecology) in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) and her research focused on heavily modified large European rivers (Danube, Rhine).

Results were presented in international conferences and in published peer-review journals. In parallel, she worked as scientific advisor for the renaturalization of the Manzanares River (2016-2017), with results both conference-presented (2018 Best student poster award) and journal published (2022).

After her PhD, she worked as research officer (2018-2019) for Inland Fisheries Ireland, leading field and desk studies to develop a prioritised listing of restoration interventions in natural and modified channels, in the cross-boundary catchments of Ireland and Northern Ireland (Interreg CatchmentCARE project). Since December 2019, she works as a researcher in CEDEX, applying her methodological approach to Spanish rivers, with published results in a paper, a chapter in a book, and presented in international conferences. In May 2022 she also began working part-time as a lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Her main contribution to society is that most of her research and restoration proposals have been put into practice, moving from the theoretical to the practical sphere. She has always maintained constant dialogue with administrations and stakeholders, which is key to knowledge transfer, with active discussions in workshops, this being especially delicate in cross-boundary regions (Germany-France, Ireland-Northern Ireland, Portugal-Spain). The execution of river restoration plans and projects has led to a significant recovery of the ecological functions and ecosystem services of river-floodplain systems, contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Goals.

She has been academic mentor to a small number of students from undergraduate and M Sc. to PhD level and has provided on-site desk and field training in relevant areas to staff working with her. She is a member of the Environment and Water Resources Research group at the Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability Research unit (University of Lisbon, Portugal). She maintains collaborating activities with the following Research groups: Ecología, Cambio Global y Restauración de Ecosistemas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), and Laboratoire Image, Ville, Environnement Research group (University of Strasbourg, France). She has also maintained collaborating activities with the Madrid City Council for the follow-up of the Renaturalisation of the Manzanares River.

Member of two thesis defence tribunals (Feb. 2020 and July 2021). Member of the Colegio de Ambientólogos de Madrid, of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR) and of the Centro Ibérico de Restauración Fluvial (CIREF). Coordination with the European Centre for River Restoration (ECRR) during the development of the Interreg CatchmentCARE Project in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

In order to maintain a high level of English proficiency, the language in which she has mainly published, she completed in 2020 her BA in English Studies by the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain), obtaining her degree’s dissertation the highest qualification (Matrícula de honor). This research work, an analysis of English usage in Freshwater Ecology research articles, was published in 2021 as a paper (Díaz-Redondo, 2021).