People & Partners

Amanda Manyani

Amanda Manyani is PhD candidate in Sustainable Development, Planning and Management. Through her post-graduate training, she focused on the meaning(s) of nature to urban dwellers, using the bio-cultural diversity lens. Some of the lessons learnt have led her to her current work in her PhD, as she seeks to understand the development of SES research as an approach that assumes that people and nature are inseparable. Amanda leans on science and technology studies as she borrows the concept of ‘boundary objects’ to examine how SES research has enabled the conventional divide between the natural and social sciences to be bridged, by viewing humans and nature as intertwined phenomena. Furthermore, she uses the theory of complexity as it offers a potential paradigm shift in how we view the nature of the world and how it has influenced the SES field to integrate the conventionally separate disciplines of natural and social sciences. Her research to date has been interdisciplinary and integrative, and she combines extensive desktop and field surveys to address applied and basic research questions.

• Social-ecological systems research
• Complex adaptive systems
• Science studies