MSCA Fellowship SSpaceGX — Outcomes (2023–2025)

Key findings Link to heading

  • The fellowship produced 9 peer-reviewed articles in 2 years, covering transboundary conservation, spatial inequalities, capital footprint mapping, child labour trajectories, and community forest management — a cross-disciplinary output that bridges ecological economics, social anthropology, and geospatial analysis.
  • The methodological framework — combining Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), geostatistical modelling, and ethnographic fieldwork — proved transferable: the same pipeline applied to the Gerês-Xurés Biosphere Reserve is now being adapted for protected areas in Misiones (Argentina) and the MERCOSUR tri-border region.
  • All 11 open-science outputs deposited on Zenodo follow FAIR principles and include reproducible analytical workflows, interactive geostatistical applications, and consolidated datasets — enabling independent verification and reuse by other research groups.
  • The project demonstrated that combining Bourdieusian field theory with spatial econometrics offers a productive framework for analysing how conservation policies redistribute forms of capital (economic, cultural, social) across territory.

Overview Link to heading

The SSpaceGX project (Grant Agreement 101102978) was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship funded under Horizon Europe (MSCA-PF-2022), hosted at the Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Universidade do Porto (Portugal). The fellowship ran from December 2023 to December 2025 (2 years), with EU funding of €172,618.

The project analysed the social space of nature conservation in the Gerês-Xurés Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (Portugal/Spain), combining geospatial analysis, geometric data analysis (Multiple Correspondence Analysis), and ethnographic methods to model socio-environmental interdependencies surrounding protected areas. The methodological framework is applicable to other biosphere reserves worldwide.

Peer-reviewed publications Link to heading

The fellowship produced 9 peer-reviewed articles. The core outputs address transboundary conservation, spatial inequalities, and forest management in the Gerês-Xurés area, whilst the remaining publications on child labour and protected areas in other countries stem from parallel academic collaborations maintained during the project period:

Biosphere reserve and spatial inequalities Link to heading

  1. Gómez, R. E. & Miño, M. G. (2025). Sobre las relaciones hombre-naturaleza en la Reserva de Biosfera Transfronteriza Gerês Xurés. Sociologia: Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 51. DOI: 10.21747/08723419/SOC51A2

  2. Gómez, R. E., Miño, M. G., Borges Pereira, V. & Jardón, C. M. (2025). Spatial distribution and classification of objectified capital in the Gerês-Xurés Transboundary Biosphere Reserve. Frontiers in Environmental Economics, 4. DOI: 10.3389/frevc.2025.1463694

  3. Gómez, R. E. & Miño, M. G. (2025). Extensive objectified footprints: A multidimensional approach to spatial inequalities. City and Environment Interactions, 28. DOI: 10.1016/j.cacint.2025.100226

  4. Gómez, R. E., Miño, M. G., Hojman, G. D., Arellano, D. M., Cossi, C. A. & Sosa, L. (2025). Tracing Emplaced Capital Footprints in Arcos de Valdevez, Portugal. Comparative Sociology, 24. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14140985

  5. Gómez, R. E. & Miño, M. G. (2023). Compartimentalizando naturaleza: sobre las Áreas Naturales Protegidas de México y Argentina. Letras Verdes. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Socioambientales. DOI: 10.17141/letrasverdes.33.2023.5567

Child labour Link to heading

  1. Miño, M. G., Cossi, C. A. & Gómez, R. E. (2024). Trabajo infantil e intervención municipal: experiencia de transferencia y praxis profesional desde la Universidad Nacional de Misiones, Argentina. Revista De Treball Social. DOI: 10.32061/RTS2024.227.05

  2. Miño, M. G., Cossi, C. A., Gómez, R. E. & Jiménez García, A. (2024). Child labour trajectories of girls and adolescents in the cross-border region of Posadas (Argentina) – Encarnación (Paraguay). Cadernos IS-UP. DOI: 10.21747/2975-8033/CAD5A1

  3. Miño, M. G., Cossi, C. A. & Gómez, R. E. (2023). Las contribuciones de la perspectiva Bourdieana a la investigación del trabajo infantil en Argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales, 13. DOI: 10.24215/18537863e123

Forest management Link to heading

  1. Miño, M. G. & Gómez, R. E. (2025). Sustainable production models in rural Galicia: environmental challenges in community forest management. Problemy Polityki Społecznej. Studia i Dyskusje, 70. DOI: 10.31971/PPS/205746

Open science outputs Link to heading

The project deposited 11 open-access outputs on Zenodo, including reproducible analytical workflows, interactive geostatistical applications, and consolidated datasets — all following FAIR principles and Horizon Europe open science requirements. The full list is available on the CORDIS results page.

Resources Link to heading