Nicoli Nattrass

Prof Nicoli Nattrass is a development economist in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) with an inter-disciplinary background in social science. She has a doctorate from Oxford (where she was a Rhodes Scholar) and is a regular visiting professor at Yale. In 2019 she will be teaching courses on “Human-Wildlife Conflict in Africa” and “Markets, Socialism and Development”. Nicoli won the UCT teachers award in 2001 and has twice won the UCT book award: in 2005 for ‘The Moral Economy of AIDS in South Africa’, and in 2014 for ‘The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back’. Her published work (80 journal articles and 11 books) is predominantly on the political economy of inequality and health in South Africa, the interface between science and society, and, more recently, on human-wildlife conflict. See here and here. Nicoli is the co-director of the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa (iCWild) at UCT. Her work in iCWild focuses on human-wildlife conflict in Southern Africa (notably with predators), the socio-economic determinants of poison use, and the role of science, economics and culture in shaping policy and practice. She conducts mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) research including conducting and analysing social surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, and historical research.