Anne Achieng
is a passionate anthropologist with a profound interest in the study of women and the diverse ways in which people lead their lives. With an ongoing MA in anthropology from the University of Nairobi, she has dedicated her career to unravelling the intricate connections between gender, culture, and society. Driven by a deep curiosity, she has conducted fieldwork in a remote community in Kenya, exploring the roles, challenges, and contributions of women in various circumstances. Her aim is to foster cross-cultural understanding and empower marginalised voices to drive positive social change.
Christine Adongo
holds an MSc in environmental sciences from Kenyatta University, Nairobi. Her research focuses on the anthropology of energy, green growth and climate change in Kenyan peripheries. She has been a research associate at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, under the Marie Curie ITN Resilience in East African Landscapes (REAL) project. She is currently finishing up her PhD in social anthropology, where she is exploring the anthropology of renewable energy interventions, environmental change and local adaptation in Naivasha.
Michael Bollig
is professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne. His key interest is the environmental anthropology of Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research projects focus on the social-ecological dynamics of large-scale conservation projects, the commodification of nature and the political ecology of pastoralism. He holds the ERC advanced grant REWILDING and is the current speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation. He is also the author of Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment (2006), co-author of African Landscapes (2009) with O. Bubenzer, and co-editor of the volumes Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs (2017) with D. Anderson and African Futures (2022) with C. Greiner and S. van Wolputte.
Bernard Calas
is a professor in geography at Bordeaux-Montaigne University, Researcher at the Les Afriques dans le monde (UMR 5115 LAM) research centre. He is specialised in economic and political geography with a focus on African emerging
Johannes Dittmann
is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bonn (Department of Geography) and associated member of the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation. His key interests lie in development geography and political ecology of Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of his master thesis, he did qualitative social research on the politics fishery at Lake Naivasha in collaboration with Antony F. Ogolla. In his PhD he focused on the politics of transboundary conservation in northeastern Namibia. As part of his post-doctoral project, he is concerned with the relativity of failure and success in development and adaptation to climate change.
Selina Emmanuel
holds an Honours Bachelor of social sciences in international development and globalisation from the University of Ottawa and is currently completing her graduate studies in geography of environmental risks and human security at the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany. Nurturing her passion for equitable and climate-resilient human and natural systems, she is exploring urban food systems governance in her master’s thesis. Previously, she has worked in development cooperation, focusing on human rights and environmental due diligence obligations of European textile companies and small-scale sustainable solid waste management.
Andreas Gemählich
is an expert for international trade and development with a focus on cut-flower production in East Africa and South America. For his PhD, which he pursued in the context of the research group Resilience, Collapse and Reorganization in Social Ecological Systems of African Savannahs, he conducted a study on the interrelations between the social-ecological system of Lake Naivasha and the global cut-flower market.
Giulia Silvia Giberti
graduated in natural sciences, with a PhD in applied botany and forest ecology and is currently working at the National Research Council of Italy. With her research she is investigating the effects of global changes on natural ecosystems, with a perspective range over vegetation community to individual plant species to improve knowledge on conservation biology and on ecosystems and
Annalia Gminder
studies geography with a special focus on globalisation and development at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her main interests include the fields of medical, development and economic geography with a regional focus on India and Eastern Africa. Through an internship with a development organisation, she has developed a passion for the topics of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and menstrual health and hygiene and the way public institutions and communities deal with it. In her current master thesis, she combines her interests by writing about the WASH infrastructure in healthcare facilities as therapeutic landscapes in India.
Marie L. Gravesen
is a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in the unit for Sustainable Development and Governance. Her overall work pertains to conflicts and management of natural resources and climate change adaptation with a focus on East and West Africa. At DIIS, she is currently working on the FFU funded GAP programme, focusing on the political economy of funds that are channelled into climate change adaptation in Kenya and Tanzania. She undertook her doctoral work at Cologne University under the Marie Curie ITN Resilience in East African Landscapes (REAL). Her doctorate work looked at the politics of land conflicts in Kenya’s Laikipia County. This work has culminated into several academic publications, including her monograph The Contested Lands of Laikipia - Histories of Claims and Conflict in a Kenyan Landscape published by Brill in 2020.
David Harper
is a retired freshwater scientist, formerly professor in the University of Leicester Department of Biology. His major research was the ecology of the Rift Valley Lakes for 33 years, funded by the Earthwatch Institute, British Council, student field courses and grants for local PhDs. He worked in partnership with the University of Nairobi and the National Museums of Kenya. His team initially analysed lake ecology in relation to alien species (Lake Naivasha) and degree of alkalinity (different soda lakes) but both lines of research became linked to the impacts of human activities after the turn of this century. His collaboration with Social Scientists began with NERC funding on the EAGLO project led by the University of Nairobi and concluded with the international authors in this volume. David Harper is a Fellow of the Freshwater Biological Association, the Linnean Society and the Royal Geographical Society.
holds a master’s degree in wildlife management from the University of Eldoret and is currently pursuing a PhD in environmental biology at Karatina University in Kenya. He is head of the Biodiversity Department at Kipeto Energy, overseeing ecological research and mitigation efforts. His research experience focuses on biodiversity conservation, natural resources conservation, resource planning, wildlife management, sustainable agriculture, indigenous knowledge systems, livelihoods, and human ecology. He is also a resident research associate in the Ornithology section within the Zoology Department of the National Museums of Kenya.
Eric M. Kioko
is an environmental anthropologist (PhD-2016, University of Cologne). He currently lectures at Kenyatta University in the Department of Environmental Studies and Community Development and at the University of Bonn where he doubles as a Principal Investigator in the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation. His area of research and teaching focuses on the dynamics of human-environment relations and his interests include environmental conflicts and peacebuilding, environmental crimes (focusing on forest crimes in Africa), green futures, large-scale infrastructures and social-ecological change, and dynamics of community-based conservancies. He has published several book chapters as well as articles in journals such as Africa, Africa Spectrum and The European Journal of Development Research.
Kariuki Kirigia
is an assistant professor of climate change and sustainability in Africa with joint appointment the School of the Environment and African Studies Centre at the University of Toronto. Previously, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Concordia Ethnography Lab and earned his PhD in anthropology from McGill University. His research focuses on biodiversity conservation, climate change and sustainability, land governance, local and Indigenous livelihoods, environmental and epistemic justice, racial capitalism, and decolonisation in the African context and the Global South writ large. His teaching underscores decolonial methods and experiential learning that foster critical understanding of theory and practice.
Gerda Kuiper
is a cultural anthropologist based at the University of Cologne. She pursued her PhD in the research group Resilience, Collapse and Reorganization in Social Ecological Systems of African Savannahs. She has extensive research experience
Edward Morrison
is an applied ecologist based in Kenya. His PhD research examined the ecological restoration of papyrus wetlands at Lake Naivasha. He acts as a consultant for agribusinesses, conservation groups and development agencies working with natural resources in East Africa. His interests include agroecology, sustainable soil and water management, ecological restoration and nature-based solutions for climate change. He is a former Knox Fellow of Harvard University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter.
Marie Müller-Koné
is PhD-candidate in development studies at the University of Bonn, Germany, and Senior Researcher with the independent Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), which she joined in 2009. She obtained a Master’s degree in global political economy from Sussex University, UK, in 2008. Her research foci have been resource conflicts, the politics of land access in Africa, ethnicisation and violence at frontiers, which she published on in journals such as World Development and Journal of Eastern African Studies. Her doctoral research on cross-scalar dispositifs of discourses of autochthony and indigeneity in Africa is part of the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation.
Detlef Müller-Mahn
is professor of development geography at the University of Bonn, and former spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation. His present research focuses on the political ecology of land-use change, future-making, and green development in East Africa. Recent projects addressed the “riskscapes” of climate change in Africa, pastoralism and hydro-development in Ethiopia, urban water management in Sudan, and the cut-flower industry of Lake Naivasha in Kenya.
Timothy Mwinami
holds a BSc and an MSc in animal genetics from the University of Nairobi. He is a research scientist at the National Museums of Kenya, Ornithology Section
Chigozie Nweke-Eze
holds an MA in development economics from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He carries out research in the fields of energy, electricity and infrastructure development and geographies in Africa. After a research stay at the University at Bayreuth, he became a research associate at the Institute of Geography, University of Bonn, under the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation. He is currently finishing his PhD in Economic and Energy Geography, where he is exploring the financing, governance and infrastructure geographies of large-scale renewable energies development in Kenya.
Antony F. Ogolla
did his PhD as part of the Collaborative Research Centre Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation at the University of Bonn (Department of Geography). His key interests lie in development geography and the green economy in Eastern Africa. As part of his master thesis, he did qualitative social research on the politics of fishery at Lake Naivasha in collaboration with Johannes Dittmann. In his PhD he focused on the politics of green growth in rural Kenya.
Nic Pacini
is a hydrobiologist/hydrochemist with experience in the study of Afrotropical ecosystems. He lectured at the Universities of Leicester (UK) and Calabria (Italy) and conducted research in Kenya in the Upper Tana and in the Naivasha Basin since 2009. He was international expert in institutional twinning projects concerning water quality management in Morocco and Egypt, and national Italian environmental expert during G8 and G20 negotiations. He co-authored 90 scientific articles, book chapters and reports, acts as board member of the Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (SETAC) and as subject editor of the African Journal of Ecology. Currently he is Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental Engineering of the University of Calabria, Italy, and Honorary Fellow at the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, University of Leicester (UK).
Sylvain Racaud
is a senior lecturer in geography at Bordeaux-Montaigne University, researcher at the Les Afriques dans le monde (UMR 5115 LAM) research centre and co-director of the journal Suds (previously Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer). He works on the
Gaële Rouillé-Kielo
is a social and environmental geographer attached to the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (UMR 9003 LISIS) research laboratory in France. Her work focuses on the circulation of models of water governance and conservation across places and actor networks. She has conducted research in Kenya, Paris and Berlin. Her doctoral research examined the translation of the concept of ‘payment for watershed services’ in the Naivasha region. Most of her fieldwork was carried out on the Kinangop Plateau.
Kristin Schmit
has already been able to broaden her understanding of development studies with a bachelor’s degree in politics and an ongoing master’s degree in development geography at the University of Bonn. More recently, she developed a keen interest for topics at the interface of development, agriculture, food systems and climate change. While preparing her master thesis on risks and drivers of maladaptation to climate change, she is striving for a rapprochement of research and practice in the field of development cooperation. She hopes that her enthusiasm for cross-cultural exchange and learning will continue to guide her academic and professional curriculum.
Megan A. Styles
is an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Illinois Springfield. She holds a PhD in environmental anthropology from the University of Washington Seattle. She has conducted ethnographic research on the cut-flower industry in Naivasha since 2004 and is the author of Roses from Kenya: Labor, Environment, and the Global Trade in Cut Flowers (University of Washington, 2019). Her current research focuses on sustainable agricultural development in the United States and East Africa.
Caroline Upton
holds a PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge and is professor of environmental human geographies at the University of Leicester, UK. Her work explores environmental change and justice, resilience, sustainable livelihoods, conservation practices, and politics in diverse geographical and societal rural contexts. She has worked extensively with pastoralist communities in Kenya and Mongolia, as well as with smallholders in Kenya and South-East Asia,
Richard Waller
received his doctorate from Cambridge University in 1979. He is now retired from university teaching but remains an active member of the Africanist scholarly community. He has been researching and writing about the Maa-speaking communities in East Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for over fifty years; some of his work is referenced in the chapter in this volume. In addition, he has written on pastoralism more generally and on the legal history of Kenya.
Silas Wanjala
is the General Manager of Lake Naivasha Riparian Association who holds a Master in Cooperation and Development from the University of Pavia and IUSS, Italy. He is a socio-ecologist who has worked around Lake Naivasha Basin for over 10 years and has vast hands-on exposure and experience on socio-ecological dynamics within the Lake Naivasha system. He has participated in and supported a number of scientific and social research programs on Lake Naivasha linked to ecological, hydrological, social, cultural and economic facades and participated in various conservation and ecological monitoring programs.