Postdoctoral fellows at the GRG
Louise du Toit's postdoctoral research explored climate change mitigation and insurance and, in particular, aimed to identify recent instances internationally of insurance system actors engaging in actions that mitigate climate change and understand the conditions that enable and disable such actions. Her research focused on ‘strong mitigation actions’, which were identified as those actions that have the potential to contribute to deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions. The research culminated in contributions to several papers that reflected on these developments; and it is envisaged that the data gathered will contribute meaningfully to further outputs.
Louise will continue to undertake research, consulting and editing work in legal and related fields (including in her role as assistant editor of Environmental Law in South Africa).
Nicholas Simpson is a postdoctoral fellow with the Global Risk Governance programme in the Art of Resilience programme, Nick has been exploring the governance of novel Anthropocene harms through the lens of resilience. His main focus has been on how and why resilience has been employed as a means of understanding and responding to the unanticipated and severely disruptive Cape Town drought. This, and other novel worlds such as cyberspace, present known and almost certainly unforeseen challenges to the stability of societies and their securing responses to disruptive events. The Anthropocene presents unsecured environmental exposures which present new harmscapes, such as climate variability or water scarcity, which conventional approaches are ill-equipped to deal with. Likewise, the advent of ransomware attacks and data breaches present entirely new challenges to securing against such online harms within a ‘world’ which is generally poorly understood, governed or secured.
Welcome to Dr. Tariro Kamuti a postdoctoral fellow who is undertaking research into the ‘wildlife economy” supported by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).
Tariro Kamuti holds a joint PhD from the Department of Geography at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa and the Department of Organisational Sciences of the Vrije University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Before joining the Global Risk Governance programme, Tariro was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies of the University of the Free State from September 2016 to August 2018. His research interests include land and environmental policy, governance issues surrounding sustainable utilisation of natural resources, the social dimensions of biodiversity conservation, the Green Economy and sustainable urban development. He is currently working on a research project broadly focusing on the wildlife economy of South Africa sponsored by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). The research aims to contribute to the National Biodiversity Assessment to assist SANBI to enhance the country’s Biodiversity Economy Strategy (BES) for example, through Transformative Enabling Interventions.
Dr. Annette Hubschle, is currently the holder of a SANBI postdoc with a focus on the wildlife ranching economy. Annette is a senior researcher and postdoctoral fellow with the Global Risk Governance programme. She also is affiliated with the Centre of Criminology where she supervises and mentors postgraduate students. Annette holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy and the University of Cologne and a Master of Philosophy in Criminology from the University of Cape Town.