I am a doctoral researcher in environmental anthropology in the ERC Advanced Grant Project “Rewilding the Anthropocene” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig.

I studied Social and Cultural Anthropology – and Philosophy as a minor subject – at the University of Hamburg where I completed my M.A. in 2021. In the course of my curriculum I also studied Philosophy at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne in 2016. I started my PhD in 2022 at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne and as part of the “ERC Rewilding” project.

My main research interests concern human-environment relations and issues of political ecology and political economy, with a special focus on linkages between conservation and the valuation of natural resources. My dissertation project will address the historical roots of forest conservation and resource extraction in the transborder conservation area and the effects of conservation strategies on the uses and values of forest products in Southwestern Zambia.

The GSSC provides a work environment that invites young scholars to exchange ideas and work together in formal as well as informal ways. I appreciate the opportunites the GSSC offers to meet other international researchers from diverse disciplines and areas of study. Workshops and events like the GSSC lecture offer a platform for interdisciplinary exchange where you can engange in other's research topics and find inspiration for your own work.

Forest-Assemblages in Zambia’s Western Province: changing value relations and knowledge-practices between conservation and commodification

Forests are important as a key biodiversity operator, providing habitat for different kinds of animals. At the same time the livelihoods of people living in the Zambian part of the KAZA TFCA (Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area) are highly dependent on natural resources coming from the forests. My research project will deal with the historical roots of forest conservation as well as with the history of rights of extraction and the impacts of increasing centralized control over natural resources on local rural livelihoods in the Zambian part of KAZA.

The KAZA TFCA comprises a total of 85 forest reserves, the majority of which are Kalahari Sands Woodlands and Teak forests. Despite efforts to protect the forests, southern African countries are experiencing increasing deforestation. Especially the Western Province of Zambia and its valuable teak forests have increasingly become the target of logging companies in recent years. While most of the research on Zambia's forests has focused on the Miombo woodlands, the most extensive forest type in Zambia which covers around 50 percent of the country’s landscape, much less attention has been paid to the Kalahari Sand Woodlands and their history of conservation and extraction.

My study is looking at changing knowledge-practices and changing values of specific tree species and forest products in the context of conservation in Sioma’s forest reserves (Western Province of Zambia). I will look at current and past conservation strategies and reforestation projects simultaneously to extraction patterns to identify processes that lead to changing knowledge-practices and changing values of specific tree species.

Research questions include:

1. How did the forest landscapes transform through the history of extraction and of conservation? Which impact had the changing forest landscape, changing ecological, economic, and political conditions on local rural livelihoods in Zambia’s Western Province?
2. Which impact had colonial and post-independence politics of forest resource management and diverse conservation ideologies on the local uses and knowledge of forests and forest products?
3. How are various forest resources and tree species valued? What makes specific tree species valuable? How do these values change over time and space, and how have these changing values affected the worlds that people and forests inhabit?