Narel Yaroslava Paniagua Zambrana

Dr. Narel Paniagua-Zambrana is a Bolivian biologist specializing in ethnobotany. She conducts research focused on documenting and protecting traditional knowledge of plant use among indigenous populations and local communities in Bolivia and other countries in the Andean region, the Himalayas, and the Caucasus. The aim of this research is to provide local populations with tools that enable them to make decisions about the conservation of their natural resources and their traditional knowledge associated with them.

Dr. Paniagua-Zambrana was born in La Paz, Bolivia. She received her PhD in Biological Sciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain in 2016. She is an Associate Researcher at the National Herbarium of Bolivia-Institute of Ecology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and is currently a Researcher in the Department of Ethnobotany at the Institute of Botany at Ilia State University in Georgia (Caucasus).
Her research has resulted in numerous scientific articles published in indexed journals such as Nature Plants, PlosOne, BLACMA and Ethnopharmacology, among others, to which she also contributes as a reviewer and editor. She has published more than 150 book chapters and edited more than 15 books. Dr. Paniagua-Zambrana has been recognized as one of the most published researchers in Bolivia between 2018 and 2019, according to a regional report by Elsevier and Google Scholar. However, many of her publications have not only had an impact on the international scientific community, but also on the indigenous peoples and local communities in which she has worked, where she has made a special effort to return information in compliance with the mandates of the Nagoya Protocol. Since 2020, she has served as editor-in-chief with Dr. Rainer Bussmann for the series “Ethnobotany of Mountain Regions,” an encyclopedic series published by Springer that provides information related to the most important useful plants in mountain environments around the world. As of 2021, the series has six books published for the mountainous regions of Brazil, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central Asia and Altai, the Andes, and Eastern Europe.
She actively collaborates in the training of master's and doctoral students interested in ethnobotanical and ethnobiological studies in general, not only in Bolivia but also in other countries in the region and around the world. She is a professor at ILIA State University in Georgia (Caucasus) and a visiting professor in the Doctorate in Biology program at the University of San Marcos (Lima, Peru). She is a member of the Society for Economic Botany (SEB), the Latin American Botanical Association (ALB), the Latin American Ethnobotany Group - Bolivia Group (GELA), the Bolivian Organization for Women in Science/TWOWS (Third World Organization for Women in Science in Sicily, Italy), and the Organization for Women in Science in the Developing World (OWSD).