I. (Iva) Pesa, PhD

2022-2027: I lead the ERC-funded project 'AFREXTRACT: Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa: Understanding Cultural and Political Responses to Environmental Transformation.' Together with one PhD candidate and three post-doctoral fellows we will study the environmental histories of resource extraction in three localities: oil drilling in the Niger Delta, copper mining on the Zambian Copperbelt, and gold mining in Johannesburg. Our central question is why the dramatic environmental effects of mining and oil drilling on landscapes and lifeworlds have elicited radically divergent cultural and political responses, ranging from apparent acquiescence to violent protest. Relying on oral history, archival research, popular literature (novels and poems), and music, we seek to understand how various actors have experienced and responded to environmental change. Inspired by decolonial and environmental humanities approaches, our study broadens the conceptualisation of varieties of environmentalism beyond resistance and resignation. We collaborate closely with the University of Port Harcourt, Copperbelt University, and the University of Pretoria's African Observatory for Environmental Humanities. 

Some of the other projects I am currently working on are:

- British Academy funded project on Values in the Anthropocene, together with Paul Merchant, Simone Schleper, Dan Finch-Race, and Leo Steeds (see: groundingvalue.org)

- From April-July 2022 I was a Landhaus fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich

PhD candidates I work with:

Tholithemba Lorenzo Ndaba, “Space, Time & Everyday Life”: A multi-faceted, in-depth analysis of the curbed histories of the “others” about their environment on or by the mine dump sites, in Johannesburg

Peter Lindhoud, The ecumenical movement and social change in Northern Rhodesia, 1924-1964, African Studies Centre Leiden

Dr Arsene Mushagalusa Balasha defended his PhD thesis in April 2024 at the Université de Lubumbashi (DR Congo)