Elizabeth Kruger Email and Phone Number

I specialise in understanding, communicating and facilitating human-nature connection. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I make sense of complex environmental issues using classic ethnographic research methods (interviews, surveys, and participant observation), literature and policy analysis. As environmental communicator, I use a variety of mediums to engage with diverse audiences – writing, teaching, arts and events production, and the curation of immersive experiences.My experience lies in:• water governance and water management, from policy and governance through to public trust and participatory research (urban and rural)• environmentalism, environmental movements and sustainable development, conservation, ecology and forest conservation practice• regenerative agriculture, permaculture and food politics• indigenous knowledge & healing and ethnobotany• land reform, land rights and land restitution• policy analysis (with a focus on South African environmental, water, housing and municipal policy)• teachingI have worked in the academic and NPO spaces on community-led water management in urban slums/informal settlements, greywater management, water governance, public trust, permaculture, teacher training, environmental education, course co-ordination and office management. As writer and editor, I have worked in a range of capacities – as academic tutor, grant and blog writer, web copy writer, research reports and policy recommendations, and a range of pro bono offerings for academics and activists. I excel at guiding students and emerging writers in their writing process. In addition, I produce events and art installations that incorporate the themes of human-nature connection, ecology and environmentalism as effective strategies for communicating environmental issues and effecting change.I have travelled from the Amazon to the Andes, and the Western Ghats to the Himalayas, sitting with curanderos, sadhus, pajes and sangomas. I received my PhD in environmental anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand as a Carnegie Fellow with the Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute. My undergraduate studies were conducted at the University of Cape Town, where I received scholarships from the Institute of Plant Conservation and the Water Research Commission, and undertook research with interdisciplinary teams from botany, civil engineering, environmental science and social anthropology.