Dr. Julián Daniel Mijailoff and Alberto Anticoli, both of the Modelling Human-Environmental Interactions (MHEI) Group at Freie Universität Berlin, traveled to Portugal to present their research at the 4th European Rural Geographies Conference, "Reinventing Rural Spaces: Resilience, Innovation and Sustainability in a Changing World," held at the University of Porto from 22nd to 26th of June 2026. Mijailoff presented "Institutional Weakness in Transnational Forest Governance: Comparative Insights from the Alto Paraná Atlantic Forest," co-authored with Lía Montti, Nestor Ignacio Gasparri, and María Piquer-Rodríguez. The study examines how formal institutions shape forest governance across Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, combining content analysis with expert interviews to identify recurring patterns of institutional weakness — including "window dressing" institutions, uneven state capacity, and institutional instability — that widen the gap between stated policy goals and actual land-use outcomes in the transnational Alto Paraná Atlantic Forest region.

Anticoli presented "Spatial land conflict typologies in the Atlantic Forest of South America," co-authored with Jonathan von Below, Ana Alice Eleuterio, Aníbal Orué Pozzo, Ahuvit Trumper, and María Piquer-Rodríguez, and recently published in the Journal of Rural Studies. The paper offers the first spatial characterization of land-conflict typologies across the Atlantic Forest's triple frontier, revealing how each country's socio-environmental history shapes its conflicts: agribusiness expansion displacing small producers in Brazil, forestry-driven clashes with rural and indigenous communities in Argentina, and rapid deforestation backed by large landowners in Paraguay. Together, the two presentations underscore the MHEI Group's ongoing contribution to understanding institutional and social dimensions of land-use change in the Atlantic Forest ecoregion.