People & Partners

Dr Julia van Velden is a social-ecological researcher, working within the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project. She also currently acts as the co-ordinator for the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) and is one of the co-ordinators for the CST’s PhD programme. Julia completed her PhD in 2020 at Griffith University. Her PhD investigated wild meat hunting in Malawi from the viewpoint of communities and practitioners. Julia previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Cairns in Australia before joining the CST in 2021. She is interested in using participatory approaches and futures thinking to understand conservation issues such as multifunctional landscapes, invasive species, human-wildlife interactions, and the wildlife economy.