Research interests
- Environmental social sciences, resource governance, institutional economics
- Path dependence and transformations towards equitability and sustainability
- Change in values, behavior, norms in relation to nature, biodiversity, climate, forests, transboundary waters, groundwater
- Commons, property rights, collective action
- Institutional-discourse analysis, experimental surveys, experiential behavioral games for sustainability
- Full member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
- Working with the International Association for the Study of the Commons
- Earth System Governance Research Fellow – Taskforce on the Governance of Nature and Biodiversity
- Visiting Scholar at the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment, Arizona State University
- Policy and governance expert at the OSCE Capacity Building of Young Researchers from Central Asia and Afghanistan in Water Policy Studies
- Founding member of the Interdisciplinary Network on the Study of the Rights of Nature
Research projects
- Horizon Europe Project DAISY: DigitAl, technologIcal and Social innovation mixes enabling transformation for biodiversity and equitY
- iDiv Flexpool PrioDiv: Prioritising biodiversity in decision-making: understanding information processing in the context of multiple crises and dynamic data using experiments and text analysis
- Horizon Europe PLANET4B: understanding Plural values, intersectionality, Leverage points, Attitudes, Norms, behaviour and social lEarning in Transformation for Biodiversity decision making
- TU Nexus (Finnish Academy of Sciences: Societal constraints on integrating water balance and energy system models for improved benefit sharing in transboundary river basins
- The future of the Rights of Nature: an interdisciplinary scoping analysis (Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom
- Scaling up experiential learning tools for sustainable water governance in India
- SUSADICA: Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia
- Tailoring benefit sharing for sustainability of global environmental commons
- Benefit sharing in transboundary water governance
Selected publications
Soliev, I., Pirscher, F., Schreiber, M. (2025). The making of Rights of Nature: Nine patterns in a decade of empirical research on social-ecological drivers and actors. Environmental Research Communications (in production).
Soliev, I. (2025). Social-technological dimensions of land use in agriculture: Applying and advancing the IPBES framework for transformative change assessment in the examples of land sharing and land sparing. Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, 3rd edition (in production).
Soliev, I., Zolyomi, A., Franklin, A. (2025). Reflexivity-Situatedness Matrix: An intervention-centered analytical framework for enabling transformations through transdisciplinary partnerships. Earth Stewardship e70020 (in production).
Soliev, I., Podlaszewska, A., Saydaliev, Z. & Wähler, T. (2023). Urban youth, intersectionality, and nature in Germany. In: Methodological framework for intersectionality analysis. (Report No D1.3). Anita Thaler & Sandra Karner (eds.). Project 101082212 — PLANET4B. Brussels: European Research Executive Agency, chapter 4.3, pp. 31–36.
Schleiffer, M., Smith, B., Frick, R., Bredin, Y., Sabir, G.,Udall, D., Pataki, G., Cooke, G., Singsaas, F., Soliev, I., Czett, C., Bonetti, M., Villa, M., Fitzka, L., Loučková, B., Mendes, V. & Home, R. (2023). Report on biodiversity and related concepts perceptions. (Report No D1.1). Project 101082212 —PLANET4B. Brussels: European Research Executive Agency.
Haller, T. Soliev, I. (2023). Commons and Policy: Compilation of Inputs and Reflections – IASC Europe and CIS Colloquium Series 2022 (1.0). IASC Europe & CIS Colloquium Series on Commons and Policy, Bern, Switzerland. doi/URL.
Gilbert, J., Soliev, I., Robertson, A., Vermeylen, S., Williams, N.W., Grabowski, R.C. (2023). Understanding the Rights of Nature: working together across and beyond disciplines. Human Ecology 51:363-377, doi/URL.
Zolyomi, A., Franklin, A., Smith, B., Soliev, I. (2023). Ecosystem services as the silver bullet? A systematic review of how ecosystem services assessments impact biodiversity prioritisation in policy. Earth System Governance 16: 100178, doi/URL.
Falk, T., Zhang, W., Meinzen-Dick, R., Bartles, L., Sanil, R., Priyadarshini, P., Soliev, I. (2023). Games for experiential learning: Triggering collective changes in commons management. Ecology and Society 28(1): 30, doi/URL.
Soliev, I., Janssen, M.A., Theesfeld, I., Pritchard, C., Pirscher, F., Lee, A. (2021). Channeling environmentalism into climate policy: An experimental study of Fridays for Future participants from Germany. Environmental Research Letters 16: 114035, doi/URL.
Soliev, I., Theesfeld, I., Abert, E., Schramm, W. (2021). Benefit sharing and conflict transformation: Insights for and from REDD+ forest governance in sub-Saharan Africa. Forest Policy and Economics 133: 102623, doi/URL.
Niyazmetov, D., Soliev, I., Theesfeld, I. (2021). Ordered to volunteer? Institutional compatibility assessment of establishing agricultural cooperatives in Uzbekistan. Land Use Policy 108: 105538, doi/URL.
Bunkus, R., Soliev, I., Theesfeld, I. (2020). Density of resident farmers and rural inhabitants’ relationship to agriculture: operationalizing complex social interactions with a structural equation model. Agriculture and Human Values 37(1): 47-63, doi/URL.