Dr Annette Hübschle

Chief Research Officer

  Room 6.23, Kramer Law Building


Dr Annette Hübschle is a Chief Research Officer in UCT’s Department of Public Law and co-leads the Global Risk Governance Programme. She leads its Environmental and Planetary Futures and AI Harmscapes and Governance research groups.

Her interdisciplinary research spans criminology, public law and economic sociology, with a particular focus on environmental and AI governance, illegal markets, transnational crime and contested regulation. A central contribution of her scholarship is the development and application of harmscapes as a framework for tracing how environmental, technological and security harms accumulate across institutions, communities and places. Her work encompasses wildlife, ocean, climate and AI harmscapes, foregrounding community knowledge, resistance, justice and possibilities for repair.

Annette’s research on contested and irregular regulation examines the interfaces between legal and illegal economies and the ways regulatory ambiguity, uneven enforcement and questions of legitimacy shape wildlife, collectables and natural-resource markets. Her work advances pragmatic conservation, socioecological harm reduction and whole-of-society responses that recognise Indigenous Peoples and local communities as central institutions in environmental governance.

Her growing body of work on AI harmscapes investigates how AI-related harms emerge across technological systems, governance arrangements and unequal social infrastructures. She serves as Safeguarding and Ethics Lead of the African Hub on AI Safety, Peace and Security and is a member of the steering committee of UCT’s AI Initiative. Her research uses harmscape and whole-of-society mapping to identify affected communities, governance gaps and pathways towards accountability, safeguarding and repair.

Annette holds a PhD in Social Sciences and Economics from the University of Cologne and the International Max Planck Research School, and an MPhil in Criminal Justice from UCT. She supervises postgraduate research and contributes to teaching on environmental governance, illegal markets, AI governance, contested regulation and 21st-century harmscapes.
 

Selected current research

  • African Hub on AI Safety, Peace and Security: safeguarding, ethics, AI governance and community engagement.
  • African Compute Initiative: social science, governance and operations research.
  • Policing a Smart City: emerging technologies and AI-enabled public safety in Cape Town.
  • Safeguarding Southern Africa’s Succulents: analysing the supply and demand networks driving illegal trade.
  • Ocean harmscapes and digital evidence: investigating maritime environmental crime and the governance and use of digital evidence.

Selected Publications

  • Massé, Francis, A Hübschle, L Gutiérrez, R W.Y. Wong and T Wyatt (eds), 2026. Routledge Handbook of Wildlife Crime. London: Routledge (Routledge Environment and Sustainability Handbooks). 348 pages.https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Wildlife-Crime/Masse-Hubschle-Gutierrez-Wong-Wyatt/p/book/9781032368146
  • Di Minin, E., D’Cruze, N., Elwin, A., Hübschle, A., Kemp, R., Kulkarni, R., Si, H., Soriano-Redondo, A. and Torrents-Ticó, M. (2026). Global trends and impacts of the online illegal wildlife trade. Nature Reviews Biodiversity. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00192-8
  • Hübschle, A. and Shearing, C. (2026). Artificial Intelligence Harmscapes: Rethinking Governance in the Age of Cognitive Tools. Contemporary Justice Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2026.2647199
  • Hübschle, A., Mackenzie, S. and Yates, D. (2026). Variably legal and irregularly regulated: global markets in collectable antiquities, wildlife and fossils. Variably legal markets. London: Routledge. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429197192-8/variably-legal-irregularly-regulated-annette-hübschle-simon-mackenzie-donna-yates
  • Berg, J., Hübschle, A., Scott, J. and Watson, D. (2026) ‘Small Island Developing States: Emerging harmscapes and criminological directions’, in Cavalcanti, R.P., Fonseca, D.S., Vegh Weis, V., Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and Scott, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74932-2_128-1.
  • Hübschle, A. and Berg, J. (2026) ‘Rethinking ocean harmscapes through the lens of southern blue criminology’, in Cavalcanti, R.P., Fonseca, D.S., Vegh Weis, V., Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and Scott, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74932-2_129-1.
  • Hübschle, A. and Kerina, K. (2026) ‘Harmscapes and resistance in the Okavango: Towards a community-centred environmental justice model’, in Cavalcanti, R.P., Fonseca, D.S., Vegh Weis, V., Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and Scott, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global
  • Hübschle, A., Kerina, K., Mogende, E. and Suping, K. (2024). Voices from the frontlines: Elite capture of environmental activism, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.3317
  • Hübschle, A. and Berg, J. (2024) Southern blue criminology: Rethinking ocean harmscapes in a global context. Frontiers in Conservation Science 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2024.1422829
  • Hübschle, A. and Margulies, J. (2024) The need for a socioecological harm reduction approach to reduce illegal wildlife trade. Conservation Biology 38 (5):e14335. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14335
  • Hübschle, A. et al. 2021. Focus on victims and the community: applying restorative justice principles to wildlife crime offences in South Africa. The International Journal of Restorative Justice 4 (1): 140-150. https://doi.org/10.5553/IJRJ.000030
  • Hübschle, A. 2017. The social economy of rhino poaching: Of economic freedom fighters, professional hunters and marginalized local people. Current Sociology 65 (3): 427-447.
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392116673210