Camila Ponce Lara joined the City Science Lab – Univ. Klagenfurt as a Senior Scientist in September 2025 and acts as the CSL coordinator. She conducts research on environmental politics, social movements, and post-extractivist transformations. At the Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics, she contributes expertise on youth activism, feminist mobilizations, and democratic change. Ponce Lara earned her PhD at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS Paris) and subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship at Philipps-Universität Marburg before serving as a Senior Researcher at the University of Ostrava. She is the author of Student-Led Movements and Political Transformation in Contemporary Chile (Palgrave MacMillan) and has extensive experience working with diverse youth communities, collaborating with stakeholders, and conducting qualitative research across Latin America and the Middle East. Her work integrates rigorous qualitative methods with creative and community-oriented approaches to explore how societies imagine and build alternatives beyond extractivism.