She is one of five recipients of the award established by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland in 2014 to recognize the contributions of distinguished female researchers in the developing region, in the field of public health and sustainable development.
While doing her postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy (InFER) at BOKU, Vienna, she conducted a study on regulatory configurations in Philippine mining governance and their implications for corporate accountability to environmental standards and sustainable mining practices. She also co-authored a journal publication examining the coherence of legal frameworks for ecosystem services toward sustainable mineral development in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). She was also closely involved with ASEA-UNINET’s launching of the sustainable development agenda as an overarching theme for the network’s focus programs and as a forefront of academic linkages among its members. Both as organizer and consultant-expert, she co-facilitated the network’s conceptualization of an integrated sustainability framework toward identifying pathways for program expansion and collaboration embedded within the sustainability agenda.
Dr. Gera is currently working as Assistant Professor of Governance and Development in the Political Science Program, College of Social Sciences at the University of the Philippines Cebu. Prior to her fellowship in Austria, she also completed a separate postdoctoral research fellowship at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability in Tokyo, where she started specializing in research on governance for sustainable development. She remains committed to contributing to the programs and projects of ASEA-UNINET.
