Associate Professor Laura Pereira, Global Change Institute, Wits University is advertising for a PhD candidate to undertake research under the Oppenheimer Generations Future Ecosystems for Africa program (FEFA). FEFA aims to drive policy strategies to enhance the resilience of African ecosystems, and the wellbeing of its people through thought-leadership and evidence-based research on the continent. The PhD candidate will be expected to
develop a project in line with Work Package 1: Futures thinking for identifying vulnerabilities/tipping points and leveraging opportunities for African informed transformative change.
This work package aims to draw on futures thinking methodologies that allow stakeholders to imagine more desirable futures for Africa away from business-as-usual. It aims to construct a theoretical and overarching framework for prioritising ecosystem-based interventions in Africa, including what to protect and how, what to rehabilitate, and whose voices need to be included in decision-making. This approach will build on findings from the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) regional assessment for Africa that emphasized that Africa’s rich bio-cultural heritage and diverse value perspectives for nature needed to be brought more strongly to the fore in science and decision-making, as well as the Nature Futures framework developed by the IPBES Task Force on scenarios and models. As such, it will take a multiple evidence base approach that appreciates diverse knowledge systems and will work closely with a wide range of stakeholders. A core aspect will be to provide African specific examples to complement ongoing research initiatives, explicitly emphasizing decolonial approaches to futures thinking, as well as engaging with alternative paradigms, such as the post-growth discourse.
As such, it will offer a strong empirical and theoretical foundation for research on African futures and on sustainability and regenerative transformations in the African context. Finally, the research seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how to enable sustainability transformations from a bottom up perspective, and will complement ongoing work within the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project.
Founded in 1922, University of the Witwatersrand is a non-profit public higher education institution located in the urban setting of the large city of Johannesburg (population range of 1,000,000-5,000,000 inhabitants), Gauteng. Officially accredited and/or recognized by the Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa, University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) is a large (uniRank enrollment range: 25,000-29,999 students) coeducational higher education institution. University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) offers courses and programs leading to officially recognized higher education degrees such as bachelor degrees, master degrees, doctorate degrees in several areas of study. See the uniRank degree levels and areas of study matrix below for further details. This 97 years old higher-education institution has a selective admission policy based on entrance examinations and students' past academic record and grades. The admission rate range is 30-40% making this South African higher education organization a very selective institution. International students are welcome to apply for enrollment.