Jessica is a Namibian social-ecological systems scientist with a background in ecology and human geography. She currently holds a Climate Research 4 Development and African Women in Climate Change fellowship at the African Climate and Development Initiative (UCT) and Postdoctoral Research Associateship at the Department of Environment and Geography (University of York). She is also a Next Einstein Forum Fellow 2019-2021, chapter scientist for the IPCC Africa AR6, and is an affiliate member of the African Academy of Science 2020-2024, University of Nairobi and African Conservation Centre. She uses probabilistic social-ecological modelling and scenario analysis to measure impacts of development on land use change. Currently, Jessica is working on a collaborative capacity building project, using participatory scenario planning to measure potential impacts of Chinese foreign direct investment in transportation corridors. She is also leading a project predicting the synergies and trade-offs of ecological infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Previously, she assessed the potential impact of climatic and demographic change on local actor decisions and land use in mountain social-ecological systems, and biodiversity and ecosystem services in smallholder agricultural landscapes.

Jessica has been involved in various ESRC, IDRC, GCRF, CR4D, NSF, NERC, NRF, DFID, CGIAR, IDRC, ESRC, and USAID funded projects, conducting field research in Nepal, India, China, Vietnam, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Switzerland, Mozambique and Peru.  Professional activities have been affiliated with the UN (e.g., Environment Programme and International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction), governments (e.g., South Africa, Ghana), NGOs (e.g., Conservation International, WWF), working closely with local stakeholders across sectors and scales to generate new information. She has similarly conducted research for the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, Centre for International Forestry Research, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, Cambridge, London School of Economics, and Brown University. Jessica sits on advisory boards for five CBOs, is an elected member of the Global Environmental Facility, has advocated for ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction and UNFCCC COP, and is a contributing author to The Economic of Ecosystems and Biodiversity reports. She has taught on international courses and supervised various PhD and MSc students. She completed her BSocSci(Hons) at UCT, MSc and DPhil at Oxford, and postdoctoral studies at Colorado State University and ETH Zurich.

Expertise:

Social-ecological systems; biodiversity and ecosystem services; urban resilience; development corridors; global environmental change; participatory modelling; climate variability and risk; adaptation; wellbeing; climate-smart agriculture

Project websites:

 https://developmentcorridors.org/ 

https://www.york.ac.uk/environment/research/kite/

 http://www.acdi.uct.ac.za/