Dr. Ana Frelih-Larsen
D.Phil. (Geography)
MSc (Environmental Change & Management)
Senior Fellow
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Dr. Ana Frelih-Larsen is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, where she coordinates activities on agriculture and soils. Since joining Ecologic Institute in 2008, she has worked extensively on the evaluation and development of policy instruments for soil health, carbon farming, and more broadly mitigation and adaptation in agriculture. Her work in particular focuses on policies that support the implementation of nature-based solutions in agriculture. A native of Slovenia and fluent in German and English, she has a strong geographic interest in Central Eastern Europe.
Dr. Ana Frelih-Larsen is currently on leave from Ecologic Institute.
She leads a project on Capacity Building for Ambitious Climate Action in the Agri-food Sector in Central Eastern Europe, funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation. She also leads work on transition pathways towards reduced reliance on synthetic pesticides in the H2020 project SPRINT. In the past, she was involved in various projects for European and German institutions on the Common Agricultural Policy, carbon farming, and soil management. She has led projects for DG FISMA (Development of agriculture screening criteria for the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy), DG Climate Action (Mainstreaming climate action in rural development programmes), and DG Environment (Inventory of soil policy instruments). She has also contributed to several research projects, including CIRCASA (Coordination of International Research Cooperation on soil Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture), RECARE (Preventing and remediation degradation of soils in Europe), SmartSOIL (Sustainable and Climate Friendly Soil Management), and Soil3 (Sustainable Subsoil Management).
Before joining the Ecologic Institute, Ana worked in the non-governmental sector on different environmental and fair-trade issues. In 2008, she completed a traineeship at the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission (EC) in Brussels in the unit responsible for Spanish rural development programs.
Ana completed a D.Phil. thesis at the University of Oxford in 2006. Her research analyzed the impact of agri-environment policy on mountain farms in Slovenia in the context of the EU enlargement process and associated agricultural reforms. Ana also holds an MSc degree with distinction in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, which she received in 2001. For her undergraduate degree, Ana studied Anthropology and Environmental Studies at McGill University in Montreal (Canada).