Dr Rita Sousa Silva is an ecologist and Assistant Professor in Urban Ecology at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University. She is passionate about trees, and her research explores how green infrastructure can be planned and managed to support urban biodiversity and human well-being. Her recent projects have focused on small urban green spaces, from street greenery to tiny forests.

More information about Rita de Sousa e Silva

Professional experience

Dr Rita Sousa Silva is an Assistant Professor in Urban Ecology at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University. Her research and teaching revolve around understanding and communicating how people and nature interact in cities.

At Leiden University, she teaches courses including Biodiversity in the City and Sustainable City in the Urban Studies bachelor's program. She has also been involved in the supervision, advising, tutoring, and training of PhD candidates and postdocs throughout her professional career.

She completed her PhD in 2018 in Forest Sciences at KU Leuven, Belgium, researching the importance of tree diversity for the resilience of forest ecosystems against climate change. Afterwards, she moved to Canada, first to do a postdoc at the Institute of Temperate Forest Sciences and later at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where her work focused on understanding how the abundance and diversity of urban trees relate to the increased prevalence of pollen allergies. In 2021, Rita was awarded a research fellowship at the Young Academy for Sustainability Research at the University of Freiburg, Germany. During this time, she co-led a research project on the role of urban green spaces in helping protect people in Germany's cities during periods of high heat, as a result of climate change.

Between 2023 and 2025, she co-chaired the Science-Policy-Society Interfacing Taskforce of the BiodivClim Knowledge Hub, focused on the biodiversity–climate nexus and part of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. She is also a member of TreeDivNet, the largest network of biodiversity experiments worldwide.

Research topic

Rita's research focuses on urban nature, its ecological and social dimensions, and its planning and management in cities.

Her current topics include:

• The contribution of small urban green spaces to cities, including habitat for biodiversity, urban cooling, and recreational and social value;
• The variety of ways in which people perceive and experience nature in cities, and how that is reflected in their well-being and attitudes towards urban biodiversity and urban greening;
• The ecological features of urban forests that have the potential to benefit or harm human health, especially in relation to pollen allergies; and
• The planning and management of urban green infrastructure to optimise ecological and climate adaptation outcomes.

This research is interdisciplinary by its nature. It combines different domains of ecology (e.g., urban ecology, forest ecology, ecosystem ecology, functional ecology) with social and environmental health sciences, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches in an effort to produce evidence that can be effectively translated into policy solutions.

Rita has ongoing research collaborations with colleagues across Europe and North America, working on biodiversity, nature-based solutions, climate resilience, environmental health, and sustainability.