Ana Maria Vargas Falla

Research Areas

• Social control
• Informal economy
• Legal consciousness and law in everyday life
• Everyday forms of resistance
• Climate adaptation
• Local democracy

Current Research

My research focuses on the relationship between the law and everyday citizens, mostly in informal settlements and the informal economy. I am particularly interested in what everyday forms of resistance tell us about local governance, state legitimacy and the role of the law. I am currently working on the following research projects:

• FORMAS project: ICARUS: Illuminating power dynamics in Cross-scale Adaptation for more Resilient and Just Futures
• HORIZON-CL6-2022-COMMUNITIES-01-05 - Assessing the socio-politics of nature-based solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities (2023-2025).
• VR project “: Explaining inclusive lower-level urbanization in Tanzania and Uganda” (2021-2023).
• FORMAS project “Everyday forms of resistance to state adaptation regulation: An ethnographic study of responses in informal settlements” (2019-2023).

I am an academic passionate about connecting research and practice. I have developed different spaces for long-term partnerships between researchers and local governments, including labs and talks for mutual learning on complex problems. We have also developed a publication series of policy briefs, video policies, case-based learning and dilemmas to help local governments access the latest research on topics of political interest. I teach different courses in sociology of law and criminology at the bachelor's level.