Fresh from the economics classrooms of the University of Cape Town, I made my way to Nqileni Village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. There, working for the Bulungula Incubator at a no-fee school, I encountered the daily realities of systemic inequalities - and people who are fiercely determined to sustainably end poverty in a generation. Later, I migrated northwards to study for a Master’s in Development Studies at the University of Oxford where I aspired to build a toolkit to better understand the world's inequalities: I learned why politics matters, why history's ills linger long after liberation, and about the dangers of searching for silver bullet solutions to complex problems. While here, I spent three months conducting fieldwork in Mathare Valley in Kenya, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and was elected as a Global Leadership Initiative Fellow.
The road from Oxford led me to the Project Management Office in the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa. As a social protection analyst, I worked with the Presidential Employment Stimulus, which has created over two million jobs and livelihood opportunities. This work sharpened my focus on two questions: how social protection can create sustainable pathways out of poverty, and how it might respond to mounting climate challenges. Now, as a PhD student in Environmental Policy and Development, I am trying to answer them by drawing (mostly) from critical perspectives on human development and adaptation to climate change.
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Publications
Zak Essa and Kate Philip (2024) “The role of Public Employment in the climate crisis” Econ3x3. Read article.
Media
Research Interests
- Climate change adaptation
- Social protection
- Climate resilient development
- Social differences and intersectionality
- Human development, poverty, and capabilities
Supervisors
- Declan Conway
- Kasia Paprocki
- Lisa Schipper