Alder M. Contreras
Alder is a research and teaching assistant and Ph.D. student at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) of the University of Antwerp (UA). He is formerly an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences at UCA. Alder has also previously represented Nicaragua as a researcher at the Homologous’ Network on Poverty and Inequality of the Association of Universities Entrusted to the Society of Jesus in Latin America (AUSJAL).
His research agenda focuses on agrarian frontier expansion dynamics at its interactions with protected areas and indigenous territories in north-east Nicaragua, participatory and spatially explicit agent-based modelling of complex adaptive social-ecological systems, and policy interventions based on green microfinance and ecosystem services approaches. In 2018, he collaborated with Nitlapan-UCA Research and Development Institute in the implementation of a Community Based Monitoring System (CBMS) project funded by the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) in the municipality of RÃo Blanco, Nicaragua. This collaboration centered on: questionnaire review and adaptation using CSPro, quantitative data processing using Stata, and geospatial data representation using QGIS.
Alder obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics with a Specialization in Rural Development at the Central American University (UCA), Nicaragua; and a Master’s degree in Development Evaluation and Management at IOB, Belgium.
