My research blends work on international development, environmental policy, and participatory democracy.
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​I ask how the ways in which sustainable development interventions engage with stakeholders affect long-run outcomes through human psychology and related behavior change. 

I have conducted fieldwork in Latin America, East Africa and Southeast Asia. I am fluent in Spanish and have received advanced training in Portuguese and Swahili. 

Selected Publications

Grillos, Tara, Nathan Cook & Krister Andersson. 2024. Collective PES Contracts Can Motivate Institutional Creation to Conserve Forests: Experimental Evidence. Conservation Letters, 17:e13066. (doi: 10.1111/conl.13066​)

Grillos, Tara. 2022. Participation Improves Collective Decisions (When It Involves Deliberation). British Journal of Political Science, 52(4). (doi: 10.1017/S0007123421000375)

​Grillos, Tara, Alan Zarychta & Jami Nelson Nuñez. 2021. Water Scarcity & Procedural Justice in Honduras: Community-Based Management Meets Market-Based Policy. World Development, 142. (doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105451)

Grillos, Tara, Patrick Bottazzi, David Crespo, Nigel Asquith & Julia P.G. Jones. 2019. In-kind conservation payments crowd in environmental values and increase support for government intervention: A Randomized trial in Bolivia. Ecological Economics, 166. (doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106404) [full text pre-print here]

Cook, Nathan, Tara Grillos & Krister Andersson. 2019. Gender quotas increase equality and effectiveness of climate policy interventions. Nature Climate Change, 9: 330-334. (doi: 10.1038/s41558-019-0438-4rdcu.be/brEMe) 

Grillos, Tara. 2018. Women's participation in environmental decision-making: Quasi-experimental evidence from northern Kenya. World Development, 108C: 115-130. (doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.03.017)

Andersson, Krister P., Nathan Cook, Tara Grillos, Maria Claudia Lopez, Carl F. Salk, Glenn D. Wright, and Esther Mwangi. 2018. Experimental evidence on payments for forest commons conservation. Nature Sustainability, 1(3):128-135. (doi:10.1038/s41893-018-0034-z)

Grillos, Tara. 2017. Participatory budgeting and the poor: Tracing bias in a multi-staged process in Solo, Indonesia. World Development, 96:343-358.  (doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.03.019) 

For a full list of publications, please visit my CV.

"Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry beings pursue with the world and with others."
​-Paolo Freire