Diana Quiroz was born in northern Mexico at the break of a summer’s day in 1981. She spent her formative years visiting a peasant great-grand mother who lived on the fringes of the Chihuahua desert and dreaming of getting to know other countries the same way the international exchange students who lived with her family, year after year, did. Fast forward two decades, Diana has lived in 9 countries (including Liberia, Yemen and Thailand) on four different continents, either completing her university studies or accompanying farming communities in processes of self-determination.

Diana holds a B.Sc. degree in Environmental and resource management (BTU-Cottbus), a M.Sc. Ecological agriculture (Kassel University), and a PhD in Ethnobotany (Wageningen University). She is also the senior field researcher at the sustainability research institute Profundo.

Diana’s fields of expertise include agroecology, natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, medical anthropology, livelihoods, and gender. She also has ample experience providing support to non-governmental and civil society organisations as well as social movements through participatory monitoring and evaluations, policy analysis, capacity building, and facilitation of processes in agroecology and food sovereignty. She’s fluent in Spanish, English, German, and French and has limited knowledge of Dutch.

Diana is a nature lover and many of the things that come with it: keen hiker, cooking aficionada, eager dancer, music lover, and avid reader. She also finds pleasure in creative writing and photography. She tends a small garden at home where she grows summer vegetables and honours her ancestors.

Her personal motto:
“If you eat only the same kinds of foods, chances are you’ll become sick. If you plant only one kind of crop, the soil will lose its fertility and eventually die. If you occupy your mind with a single or too few thoughts, chances are you’ll go nuts. Diversity is a universal law; it is manifested everywhere in nature and so we should manifest it in our lives.”

Contact: diana[at]cultivatecollective.org