EHS Research Projects

Damned waters: An ethnography on the multiple ontologies of the Berg River Dam in the Western Cape

'The weight of the totality of large dams in the world has made a measurable impact on the speed of Earth’s rotation, the tilt of its axis and shape of its gravitational field.' Thando’s research is an ontological inquiry into the multiple ways to relate to and think about large dams, with the Berg River Dam (BRD) in Franschhoek her research site. She challenges the dominance of anthropocentrism in dam narratives by seeing the BRD as more than a rigid, durable object that is an extension of our aspirational development isolated from everyday interactions and imagination. She argues that, as material entities, large dams have non-human agency as displayed in their ‘crystal ball abilities’, allowing us to predict water levels. Thando’s research was motivated by Cape Town’s dam levels and DayZero narratives.

Thando holds a BA in Anthropology and Geography and a BA Honours in Anthropology, both from the University of the Witwatersrand and is a Masters candidate in the EHS programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her main research interests is building a future curriculum on the anthropology of water that considers its different ontologies. Other interests include ecology, water analysis, cultural studies, STS, decoloniality, posthumanities, interdisciplinary research, ontological and epistemological studies. She was a Mellon Mays Fellow for 2015/2016.

Examination of connections to urban wetlands: A case study of Marlborough wetland in Harare, Zimbabwe

Esther’s research focus is driven by the widespread degradation and loss of wetlands in Zimbabwe and the urban agriculture that is one cause of such spatial and temporal loss. Her research engages farmers who are practising urban agriculture on wetlands by promoting dialogue for the development of locally appropriate intervention strategies. Other research interests are water and sanitation, climate variability and change, soil conservation, waste management and land use changes.

Currently a PhD candidate, Esther holds a Masters of Science in Environmental Policy and Planning (University of Zimbabwe) and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Social Sciences (Africa University) and is a former lecturer in Geography and Environmental Studies at Zimbabwe Open University.

Protecting invisible water bodies: The case of the Cape Flats Aquifer

Deanna’s Masters project is concerned with protecting invisible bodies of water in the context of climate change, concentrating on the case of the Cape Flats Aquifer in the Cape Town drought between 2015 and 2018. She explores multiple ‘ways of knowing’ the Cape Flats Aquifer and engages in a critical watershed ethnography in which the aquifer becomes both the site (place) and participant (body) in her observations. By tracing the layers and lenses that articulate these invisible waters, she argues that, to achieve both social and ecological justice, we must move environmental protection beyond relationships of exploitation and towards care and respect, where we value water as intrinsic and understand humanity as part of a larger earth community.

Deanna has a BSocSci (International Relations & Philosophy) and a BA Hons (Political Science). Her research interests are the protection, agency and representation of more-than-human nature, including legal environmental personhood and wild law, with specific focus on underground water, aquifer infrastructures and recharge patterns.

The river multiple: An ethnography of relating to the Kuils River in Cape Town

Nikiwe’s PhD research focus is on the Kuils River Multiple, an ethnography of the entanglement of an urban river in Cape Town with the social, economic and political worlds of the city, as well as interrogating imagined futures of the city in relation to the river. Her other research interests lie in human-nature relationships in the Anthropocene with a focus on soil and water, infrastructure, modernity and decoloniality from the global south.

Nikiwe is a Lecturer of Environmental Anthropology and a senior PhD candidate in the EHS programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is co-editor, with Associate Professors Lesley Green and Virginia MacKenny, of an upcoming book preliminarily titled Resistance is Fertile! On being sons and daughters of the soil

Where values flow: In search of a politics and ethic of care

Jess’s thesis is an exploration of the significance of care for thinking and living in a more-than-human world. It investigates what values underlie people’s choice to collect water from a source other than a domestic tap – particularly from the natural springs around Cape Town. Underlying this research is the hypothesis that a water ethic – an ethic of care – is informed and enhanced when the source of water is known, and that the enactment of water collection results in a relationship with water that translates into a more care-full approach to water use.

Jess is an environmental psychologist who works with young people in outdoor experiential education and believes firmly in the power of time outdoors as a way of finding one’s place in our more-than-human world. She is a qualified mountain, river and trail guide and teaches workshops on indigenous medicinal plants and bushcraft.

History, memory and the intergenerational transfer of trauma: The police dog as a site of living memory

Mpho A. Ndaba looks at notions of intergenerational transfer of trauma and Black experiences of the “police dog” in the age of the Anthropocene: how apartheid police violence, understood through the dog, unearths new layers of relationalities between Black South Africans and dogs as non-human species of animals.

Ndaba is an Activist scholar, Writer and Digital Content Producer. He is of the generation of activists who came out of the Fees Must Fall Movement. He holds a BA degree in International Relations (IR) & Media Studies, from the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), as well as an Honours degree in Development Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In 2018 Ndaba was listed in the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans, in the Environment category. In 2016, Ndaba was the founding chairperson of 350Wits, a chapter of the global organization, 350.org. He produces and hosts Free Media, Free Minds for Cape Town TV; he chairs Changing the Lense SA (CTLSA), a multidisciplinary and collaborative platform producing social justice, growth and development focused content. He serves as a board member and chairs the Campaigns Subcommittee at SOS Coalition. Other academic interests include Africa’s international relations, media and development policy.

Zones of dissonance: Cape Town, Koeberg and nuclearity

Neil’s thesis examines how photographers have dealt with the atomic age and predominantly been excited by it – by the awe of atomic explosions, the toxic landscapes they create, or the post-human landscapes nuclear war promises. A handful of photographers have responded to the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima and the ongoing global problem of nuclear waste, engaging in nuanced photographic projects that investigate the atomic age beyond the fetishisation of ‘bombs and reactors’. They explore the nuclearity of landscapes, spaces and objects – that are ‘nuclear’ but not ‘bombs and reactors’. The thesis includes Neil’s own photographic project to document nuclearity in and around Cape Town.

Dr Neil Overy is an environmental researcher, writer and photographer. He has worked in the non-profit sector for over 20 years and is particularly interested in the intersection between environmental and social justice issues. He recently completed an MPhil in Environmental Humanities South at the University of Cape Town.

Community-based natural resource management: The case of community forest management areas in Pete, Zanzibar

This study investigates the positive and negative impacts of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Pete Village in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The project used community narratives to understand the intersection between conservation and development efforts through their personal experiences and concluded that in spite of the achievement of some developmental goals, these efforts have failed to protect the forests and its natural resources from degradation. At the same time, community members increasingly struggle to live sustainably. The findings suggest a different intervention is needed to conserve Zanzibar’s forests while ensuring that community members can live a sustainable life.

Dina is a graduate of the EHS programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa graduate. Her research interests have focused on social and environmental issues prevalent in southern African countries. She places particular emphasis on local people’s lived experiences in relation to environmental conservation interventions, and how the interplay of state and capital’s decisions plays a significant role in the progress or deterioration of socio-ecological matters.

Project report (publ. 2017)

Living with elephants: Conservations and plantations in the Western Ghats, India

Deepak's thesis is an attempt to answer the question: How to live with wild elephants in a changing landscape? This study investigates the relationship between Adivasi people and wild elephants in and around the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve of the Kodagu District in South India, incorporating a multispecies ethnography to study the contact zone between humans and elephants.This study emphasis the inclusion of local ecological and cultural knowledge in wildlife conservation incentives, highlighting the awareness that is quite common among the Adivasi people, that elephants possess agency and intelligence.

Deepak is a PhD Student at the Centre for Research in Evolutionary, Social and Inter-Disciplinary Anthropology at the University of Roehampton. In 2017 Deepak completed an M Phil specialising in Environmental Humanities from University of Cape Town.

Multi-species ethnography of Dwesa Cwebe

Aphiwe’s masters’ dissertation focuses on what nature conservation guidelines should be used in the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve to promote inclusivity and not negatively affect relationships between Dwesa Cwebe communities and existing multi-species. He also investigates the meanings local villagers attach to nature and interrogates community folklore and how it relates to nature and considers the implications for rethinking the practise of nature conservation. His additional research interests include the challenges facing Otata abaselula base Mfuleni.

Aphiwe holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, Social Anthropology and Public Policy and Administration and an honours degree in Social Anthropology, both from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is currently a master’s candidate in the Environmental Humanities South programme.

The militarisation of conservation, violence and local people: The case of Sikumi Forest Reserve in Zimbabwe

Tafadzwa’s current research focuses on the militarisation of conservation and the rise of violence in protected conservation areas. She analyses the nature of military practices, emerging forms of violence and the consequences of such violence on people living in, and around, protected areas. Tafadzwa is more broadly interested in environmental and societal issues, with particular interest in people-state relationships.

Tafadzwa holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science from Bindura University, Zimbabwe, and an MSc in Forest and Nature Conservation from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She worked for the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe for over five years and started her PhD in Sociology under the auspices of the Environmental Humanities South programme in February 2015. She is an Andrew Mellon doctoral fellow.

((title TBC))

Oudekraal is a conservation site that forms part of the Table Mountain National Park, popularly known as a family picnic and braai area between some of the most elite coastal suburbs in Africa. Yet Oudekraal was once home to some of the indigenous peoples of the Cape and was a refuge for survivors of slavery and their descendants. This thesis unpacks how Oudekraal has evolved as a ‘natural space’ across time through the entanglements of various species and how Oudekraal has been constructed by economic, politic and scientific ideas at various points in its history. It considers whether the current paradigm of ‘conservation’ is a just way of preserving the textured histories of this coastal space.

Esley is a filmmaker and journalist with a BA (Hons). She was awarded an Andrew Mellon fellowship in her Honours year. In 2009, Esley trained at the Imagine Institute in Burkina Faso with Gaston Kabore. In 2012, she participated in DW Akadamie’s TV Features training programme in Berlin.

From seed-as-object to seed-as-relation

This research uses seed bill hearings and policy readings of the Plant Breeders Rights Act and the Plant Improvement Act to understand government and corporate views through interviews and parliamentary debates. These systems of power, the legal recognition of seed, create a specific way of knowing and ultimately influences our cultural relation to seed. The research explores Seed as Power, Seed as Commons and Seed as Story to investigate how to reclaim seed from the systems of power and strengthen its development within the urban environment.

Zayaan is from Cape Town and works to understand nuances within food systems by navigating them from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her research is embedded in land and food justice – from indigenous food reclamation to art as a tool for narrative – specifically to find ways to share stories, both of struggle and solution.

Government policy and indigenous agricultural practices in Lesotho: A modernist development model vs socio-cultural and environmental realities

Tsekiso’s PhD is an investigation into the political ecology of farming in Lesotho, to see the power relations and driving influences that impact on local traditional agriculture. He is analysing and contrasting historical policy development and outlooks, coupled with government and NGO agricultural-development projects and the farmer typologies and attendant local farming practices that exist. This study seeks to address what disjuncture(s), if any, exist between policy and reality for farmers, and how this can be ameliorated and remedied – what have been the structural/systemic causes for the continued failure of agricultural development initiatives?

Tsekiso has a background in Chemistry and Environmental and Geographical Science (UCT), and an MSc in Chemistry. His interest in ecological farming systems stems from his childhood growing up in a small farming village in Lesotho with persistent food insecurity.

Soil, bodies and animist worlds: Towards a decolonial politics of the environment in the global South

Benjamin’s research considers a number of southern African cultural and literary texts in assessing the value of relational or animistic thought, understood in an indigenous/non-Western knowledge framework, to a decolonised environmental politics in the global South. In doing this he seeks to explore how writers, artists and film-makers from the global South have responded to and dismantled exploitative relationships between humans and nonhuman nature by imagining ecological alternatives. Works considered for this project include novels by Yvonne Vera and Mia Couto, paintings by Helen Sebidi and a film by Colombian film director Ciro Guerra.

Benjamin is a PhD candidate in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. He completed his MPhil in the Environmental Humanities South programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and his MA in English Literature at the University of Leeds, UK.

The impact of herbicide use on soil under genetically modified crop production in South Africa

Nteboheng’s PhD investigates farmers’ perspectives on the production of genetically modified (GM) crops and the impact of herbicides on soil productivity in South Africa. The overall aim of the research is to explore different knowledges at the interstices of soil science and environmental humanities. Looking at the bigger picture, one of the aims of this research is to address the importance of human interconnectedness with other beings – what anthropologist Anna Tsing refers to as ‘interdependencies which exists between things and species’.

Nteboheng comes from a very diverse background. She worked as an educator at a TVET college (TVET = technical and vocational education and training) and is interested in food systems – hence her choice to do a project that involves farmers. Upon completing her studies, Nteboheng plans to help farmers learn more about how to care for their soil.

Alternatives to the economic rationalisation of renewable energy transition: The Tsitsikamma community renewable wind farm story

Michelle’s research interest is in re-thinking the political economy of how energy is harnessed to open collective imaginaries that respond differently to the crises facing the world, particularly related to climate change. She deploys philosophical positions, ideas and approaches across the Humanity-Nature divide to enhance our ability to undo binaries, alienation and separation, placing emphasis on multi-disciplinary methodologies and the contribution that other disciplines can make to post-humanism and the anthropocentrism debate. Her research focuses on ways to create, reclaim and defend renewable energy transitions and energy use in terms of relationships, explores what ‘energy democracy’ might look like and engages with the ecosophical articulations and ethics of sustainability.

Michelle is a lecturer in environmental sociology and a PhD candidate in the EHS programme. She previously worked as a researcher, policy analyst and activist on environmental and socioeconomic issues, primarily within the non-governmental sector, and served in national government during the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Assisting Africa: A critical analysis of technical assistance in low carbon development practice

The project investigates technical assistance in low carbon development through a consideration of decolonial and development theory, while bringing to the fore perceptions of African climate change-mitigation professionals. It provides a critical analysis of tacit assumptions legitimated within technical assistance practice in climate change mitigation and finds that current modes of technical assistance practice within low carbon development continue to entrench the hegemonic nature of knowledge of the global North, perpetuating the placement of Africa in a position of extraversion towards the North, assuming African government and climate change practitioners as lacking in knowledge and expertise. The study advocates for a more equal and bilateral flow of knowledge between the two regions in order for African nations to faster and more effectively reach the twin goals of development and mitigation within Africa.

Michelle is a Programme Manager at SouthSouthNorth, a climate change NGO based in Cape Town. She currently coordinates the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, a southern-led knowledge-brokering programme operating within Asia, Latin America and Africa. Michelle’s research interest lies in the ways in which hegemonic practices are perpetuated within technical assistance practice in low carbon development.

Coastal communities, blue carbon and the blue economy in the era of climate change: The implications, possibilities and challenges in Mauritius as a small island developing state (SIDS)

Jayaneesh’s research interests are quite broad, with an emphasis on links between science, nature and the democratic system. Her PhD research explores such relationships in relation to climate change and sea level rise in Mauritius and its territories. Considering Mauritius as a Small Island Developing State, Jayaneesh has a particular focus on climate adaptation and the resilience of coastal communities in the face of the rising blue economy and blue carbon initiatives.

Jayaneesh holds a BSc in Biology, specialising in Environment Protection, from the University of Mauritius, and a Masters in Conservation Biology from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. She is an EHS PhD candidate and is completing an MPhil in Environmental Law at UCT. She worked as assistant to the Conservation Coordinator at Vallée de Ferney Forest and Wildlife Reserve and as Restoration Coordinator at Friends of the Environment in Mauritius.

Living with Mount Mabo in Mozambique: Rethinking science, conservation and development in the context of neocoloniality and mass extinctions

Through the ontologies of Mount Mabo communities, Anselmo’s PhD thesis seeks to reinvigorate ways of thinking about how to practice science, justice, development and conservation so that they contribute towards socio-natural well-being in Mozambique. His other research interests are forest management, indigenous knowledges, the water-food-energy nexus and decoloniality.

Anselmo holds a bachelor’s degree in English Language Teaching and Anthropology from Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique, and a master’s degree in Environmental Science from Linköping University, Sweden. He maintains a blog on science and society and is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology. He is a researcher at Kaleidoscopio: Research in Public Policy and Culture.

Modelling human well-being for fisheries management: Science, extraction and a politics of nature in Walvis Bay, Namibia

Kelsey’s PhD research focuses on the industrial hake fishery in Walvis Bay, Namibia. Her research investigates the ways in which the logic of neoliberalism affects relations between scientific knowledge production, historical labour practices, political decision-making and local traditions of knowing and navigating the ocean. Her PhD explores the efficacy of statistical and scientific models in the industrial fishing sector and considers how breakdowns between the scientific, social and political knowledge worlds can be usefully brought into the fisheries management framework. By focusing on the relations of risk in the everyday lives of Walvis Bay workers and residents, the study offers an innovative approach that combines political economy and political ecology in Namibian fisheries management. Her research proposes how the consideration of historical injustices in fisheries ecology offers pathways toward ecological and economic justice.

Kelsey received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in June 2018. Originally from the USA, Kelsey was based in southern Africa from 2009 to 2015. Her research interests include political economy and labour; science and technology studies and carceral logics; decolonial theory and philosophy of liberation; and critical race studies. Kelsey is currently based in Brooklyn, New York and is working in the legal field of civil rights and child welfare advocacy.

People and conservation at crossroads: A case study of the Mauritius flying fox (Pteropus niger) culling controversy on the island state of Mauritius

Tavinia’s research focuses on Mauritius and the seeming binary opposition of society versus nature on the island. Her thesis examines both the pro-conservation discourses involved in the culling of the Mauritian flying fox intermittently carried out on the island since 2015 and the societal aspects that drive the massive cull of the only indigenous species of mammal left on the island. Her research explores the complexities of reconciling human with nature on an island state with no prior indigenous human population.

Tavinia holds a BA in Mass Communication from Curtin University of Technology, Australia, and an Honours degree in Media Theory and Practice from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. She also completed a diploma in Digital Film Production at the SAE Institute, Cape Town. Tavinia has accumulated experience in the tourism industry and parastatal sector as a PR executive, but her passion remains environmental protection and writing.

Rethinking interspecies contact zones: An actor-network analysis of urban conflict in an effort to conserve a marine resource

As a priest Shaun is required to go on retreat once a year. He does this by going into nature; a place apart from the busyness of the world. This is one example of the way we think about nature as that which excludes people, and thus conservation is about keeping people away from nature. Wildlife poaching is a practice in which the line between nature and people is blurred. Shaun’s research focuses on the violence associated with the confiscation of poached abalone and critiques our dualistic ways of thinking about inter alia rural/urban, human/nature and guilty/innocent.

Shaun holds a BSocSc (Hons) in Environmental and Geographical Science and Social Anthropology. He worked for 12 years in government’s Natural Resource Management programmes and is a founder member of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute and currently serves as an Anglican priest in Bonteheuwel on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Sonic apartheid: Ecoracism, apartheid geographies and noise pollution in the Symphony Way temporary relocation area in Cape Town

Alexandra’s current project is concerned with experiential ecological knowledge – working with the Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Camp (also known as Blikkiesdorp) doing research surrounding noise pollution in the "bucket brigade" style. She works with community members to collect qualitative knowledge through interviews and diary entries and will put these accounts onto a story map, along with decibel readings taken by community members during peak noise hours. This research will be put on an open source map to actively challenge neoliberal scientific understandings of how much noise pollution is too much and to interrogate the Environmental Impact Assessment that approved the move of the Cape Town International airstrip and attendant displacement of the community, putting them in the line of even more harmful noise pollution levels.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Alexandra received a BA in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia before moving to Cape Town to complete her masters in the Environmental Humanities. She is currently focusing on experiential environmental knowledge, transcorporeal embodiments and urban spatial ordering and drawing theoretically from biopolitics and neomaterial philosophy.

Towards alternative Karoo stories: An ethnographic inquiry into the multiple ontologies that come to gather on a damaged landscape

Terena’s research project investigates the conditions required to generate a liveable Karoo landscape. She has worked with livestock farmers in the Karoo region who identify their work as a kind of reclamation of what their foreparents decimated. In this research, she follows the arts of living on a damaged Karoo veld and the multispecies entanglements that allow this to happen in a context where life is constantly at stake.

Terena is completing her master’s degree in the EHS program, having completed an honours in Social Anthropology. Her research interests are in the areas of anthropology in the anthropocene, post-humanism, the non/living, urban ecologies, queer theory and storying.

Understanding the impacts of an uncertain climate environment on pastoral practice in Kajiado, Kenya

Mugambi’s PhD focuses on pastoralism as a practice of livestock keeping among the Maasai and examines its existence in the changing environment of climate uncertainty. Munene’s other research interests include climate change, climate adaptation, common property, land use, land tenure, commons, water access in rural Africa, environmental politics of arid and semi-arid lands of sub-Saharan Africa, pastoralism in Africa and rangeland livelihood.

Munene is a PhD Candidate in the Environmental Humanities Program. He holds a BSc in Biological Sciences from Bowling Green State University, Ohio and an MSc in Environmental Sciences from Egerton University, Kenya.

title TBC

Tania is working towards a practice that connects the natural and the social worlds in a way that honours that which is alive. This aliveness needs to be fostered so that our (living) world – so at risk in these times – can become more alive and, at the same time, more human. Her research interests are around human-nature relationships, urban nature and reconnecting ecological questions to an expanded sense of care, responsibility, belonging and obligation. She aspires to work towards a socially engaged ecology and towards an ecologically engaged society.

Tania is a PhD candidate in Environmental Humanities South, as well as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University of Cape Town. She is working on a Radical Hope Syllabus entitled Looking at the ordinary – a tender practice of forging relationships, initiated via a workshop at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany.