Nico Wilkins
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Title of PhD Project: Wetlandscaping: Temporalizing Conservation on the Barotse Floodplain, Western Zambia
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Franz Krause, Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig
Affiliated to Project: CRC TRR 228 Future Rural Africa, Project A04: Future Conservation
Email: nwilkin1(at)uni-koeln(dot)de
Short Bio
Nico Wilkins is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and MESH. His research is situated within the Collaborative Research Center Future Rural Africa. His dissertation examines social-ecological transformation and future-making on the Barotse Floodplain of Western Zambia, especially in regard to conservation.
Nico holds a master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Cologne (2025) and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago (2022). His thesis research at both institutions explored how white Namibians discursively engage with conservation and the natural environment to navigate shifting sociopolitical dynamics. Nico was previously a research assistant in the project Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics at the University of Cologne. During his time in Chicago, he worked as a researcher at the Field Museum’s Center for Repatriation.
Research Interests
- Political Ecology
- Environmental Anthropology
- Landscape Anthropology
- Nature Discourses
- Conservation
- Socioecological Change
- (Post)Colonialism