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Staff Profile

Dr Thembi Luckett

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow

Background

I am currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow in Human Geography. My research explores the intersections of fossil fuels, gender and climate activism in Limpopo, South Africa.

 

Prior to this position, I was a History Access postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town (2021). I completed my PhD in Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand (2021). My thesis, ‘Hope and Utopianism in Everyday Life in an Aspiring City of Coal’. The project explored the different manifestations of hope and functions of attachments to particular futures in a contradictory context of both the production of hopeful attachments to waged work and modernity’s industrial mega-projects and the destruction of histories, livelihoods and futures through the violent and colonial nature of coal extraction and coal energy production.

 

Before my PhD, I completed an MA in Social and Political Thought at Sussex University (2011), and worked on various research projects, including the history and traditions of popular education in South Africa (University of Western Cape) and the effects of mega-events on the working poor (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). I have also worked for two trade unions in the clothing and textile and agricultural sectors, and have been active in worker and student struggles for more than a decade.



https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2361-7893

Research

My current research project is called ‘Gendering and Decolonising Climate Change Research: Exploring the Waterberg, South Africa’. This project explores climate justice activism led by women living adjacent to coal mines and coal power stations in a ‘new frontier space’ of coal extraction in South Africa. The project aims to contribute towards current climate change and climate justice research and activism, through adopting a gendering and decolonising theoretical framework and methodology. The project will employ participatory methodologies and creative and novel approaches to make research more inclusive and impactful.

 

My research interests include critical and social theory, gender and feminist theory, political ecology, labour studies and radical pedagogies.
Publications