Main Partners
The NEPSUS project is a collaborative effort based at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark and the University of Dar er Salaam in Tanzania, and also includes the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, as well as Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark.
"Copenhagen Business School (CBS) was established in 1917. Today, with 20,000 students and 1,500 employees, CBS is one of the largest business schools in Europe and one of the 8 Danish universities. By virtue of our unique diversity, CBS wishes to be one of the leading universities in the world in terms of world-class research and teaching within the classic management disciplines (finance, economics, accounting, production, marketing, strategic management and organisation) and courses that place business in a wider social, political and cultural context."
"The University of Dar es salaam is the oldest and biggest public university in Tanzania. It is situated on the western side of the city of Dar es salaam, occupying 1,625 acres on the observation hill, 13 kilometers from the city centre. It was established on 1st July 1970. The University of Dar es Salaam is a unique community of students and staff dedicated to bringing out the best in all its members. Our aim is to provide the best possible environment for teaching, learning research and public services, and our track record of success is well known in East Africa, Africa and the rest of the world."
People
The NEPSUS project brings together a diverse group of researchers with a wide-range of academic expertise. The NEPSUS core team is designed to cover all the analytical, methodological and sectoral needs of the project and includes: political scientists, political economist, geographers, natural resource management scholars, anthropologists, environmental economists and sociologists. Please find individual profiles of the NEPSUS team below.
Prof. Stefano Ponte is the co-coordinator of the NEPSUS Project.
He is with the Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School and was the co-director of CBS Sustainability Platform until 2016.
He is interested in transnational economic and environmental governance, with focus on overlaps and tensions between private governance
and public regulation. His research, fieldwork, teaching and policy work is informed by international political economy approaches, global value chain analysis and convention theory.
He analyzes governance dynamics and economic and environmental upgrading trajectories in global value chains — especially in developing countries and in Africa. He is particularly interested in how sustainability standards, labels and certifications shape agro-food value chains, and in how different forms of partnerships affect sustainability outcomes.
Find more information at:
Dr. Opportuna Kweka is a Senior Lecturer in Geography with a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota in USA.
Her PhD thesis was on the implication of socio-economic and political changes on the livelihood and the environment using a case study of Burundian refugees in Tanzania.
She teaches economic and population geography, migration and environmental
studies. She also holds a masters degree in Demography and a Bachelor in Land Use, Planning and Environmental Studies from the University of Dar es Salaam.
Recently, she has been been working on natural resource governance, energy, extractive industries, role of the state and local communities participation in decision making.
Dr. Rasul A. Minja, is the Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).
Dr. Minja has a PhD in political science from the Institute for Political Science of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.
His main research interests include regional integration, regional security, governance and legitimacy issues related to natural resource extraction and management, extractive industry and
human rights observance, and election management.
He has published work on the following themes: regional integration; community policing; election management; regional security; civil-military relations; the Tanzania Union; East African Community (EAC) federation; local government elections, and the parliament and participatory democracy.
Dr. Mette Fog Olwig is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at RUC. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Copenhagen.
Her research centers on sustainability, the social dimensions of climate change, natural resources and the ethnography of the development sector.
Her work is comparative and multi-disciplinary based on a variety of
ethnographic fieldwork methods, as applied for example in Vietnam, Tanzania and Ghana.
Through her research, she aims to nuance understandings of North-South relations, ethical consumption and the inner workings of international development cooperation.
Find more information at: http://goo.gl/jqdrDq
Ms. Pilly Silvano is an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Dar es Salaam.
Her areas of interest are gender, community-based natural resource governance, conservation and sustainable forest management.
She also holds a Bachelors degree in Geography and Environmental Studies, and a Masters degree in Geography acquired from the University of Dar es Salaam and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) respectively.
Kelvin Joseph Kamnde holds an MSc degree in Geo-information science and earth observation from ITC university of Twente Netherlands. He is currently a teaching assistant at the Geography department of the University of Dar es Salaam.
Kelvin has broad experience in applying GIS and RS in planning, monitoring and assessment of natural resources, service provision, climate observations, hazard, risk assessment and prediction. He is an expert in
spatial tracking, spatial modellings for resources state assessment and predictions, and in the creation of spatial databases and web databases.
He has been involved in developing the algorithm and scripts for reconstructing cloudy sentinel-2 images. He participated in developing the model for detecting hazard and flooding risk areas of Rufiji district, assessing the forests changes of Meru District, Scenario future land cover modeling of Kikuletwa catchment, land scape fragmentation analysis in Southern Zanzibar. Kinondoni urban sprawl quantification and participated in developing the spatial database for Wami and Pangani water basin.
Dr. Christine Noe is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Dar es Salaam and is the co-coordinator of the NEPSUS Project.
She is a human geographer and an expert on conservation and development politics and how they influence rural livelihoods, land tenure and security dynamics in Tanzania. Her academic background and research activities point to the accumulated skills and experience in this area of expertise.
Her specific research foci in recent years has been on Transfrontier Conservation Areas, livelihood changes and land-based investment in Tanzania.
She has recently been involved in managing grants from among others, DANIDA through the Building Stronger Universities (BSU) platform, Future Agricultures/Land Deals Politics Initiative, and SIDA/SAREC through the University of Dar es Salaam’s Research Directorate.
Prof. Dan Brockington is Director of the Sheffield Institute of International Development at the University of Sheffield.
His research covers the social impacts of conservation, relationships between capitalism and conservation, the work of media and celebrity in development and long term livelihood change in East Africa.
He has worked mainly in Tanzania and also South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India as well as conducting global overviews of the social impacts of protected areas, media and conservation and continental wide examinations of the work of conservation NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa.
Find more information at: https://danbrockington.com/
Dr. Lasse Folke Henriksen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School where he teaches economic sociology, international political economy and new fancy research methods.
As a trained sociologist he has mainly worked on the role of experts and professions in new and hybrid forms of transnational economic and environmental governance but he is
also more broadly interested in how the global economy is governed.
In his research he frequently deploys social network analytic tools which he finds produces not only pretty pictures but also deep insights about how social structure works.
Find more information at: www.cbs.dk/en/staff/lfhdbp
Ms. Ruth Wairimu John is Assistant Lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania in the department of Geography.
She teaches Introduction to Population Studies and Natural Resources Management.
She is interested in sustainability of natural resources and community participation in natural resources management.
She also holds a Master of Arts in Geography and Environmental Management from the University of Dar es Salaam.
Dr. Asubisye Mwamfupe is a lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Dar es Salaam.
He holds a PhD in Geography, which looked at the vulnerability of farming livelihoods to climate change and the role of local institutions in enabling adaptation to climate change effects.
Ms. Faraja Daniel Namkesa is an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Department of Geography.
She holds a Master of Arts in Geography and Environmental Management. Her dissertation topic was on “Implications of People’s Relocation from the Ihefu Wetland on the Livelihoods in Mbarali District, Tanzania”.
Robert Katikiro, holds MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Bremen-Germany.
Robert has broad experience in tropical aquatic ecology, conservation and natural resource extraction and economics.
He has been involved in governance and management of marine protected areas, integrated coastal zone management, aquatic
resources impact assessment and monitoring and restoration of aquatic habitats.
His main interests include sustainable livelihoods, sustainable energy, water politics, and ocean and coastal management,
He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural and Natural Resources Economics and Business of the University of Dar es Salaam.
Caleb Gallemore holds a Ph.D. in Geography from The Ohio State University and is an assistant professor in the International Affairs Program at Lafayette College in the United States. His research interests include land-use telecoupling, world cities, environmental policy networks, and social theory.