Welcome to our new colleagues!

Debbie Sparks joins the ACDI as Senior Researcher

Debbie Sparks completed her PhD through the Environmental & Geographical Science department at the University of Cape Town in 2001, supervised by Professor Bruce Hewitson. She then began a long career working as a Senior Research Officer at the Energy Research Centre (ERC) where she worked in the field of climate change and energy. With the ERC closing, Debbie has now joined the African Climate & Development Initiative. Debbie's key research interests have been broadly in the field of energy and climate change. In addition, and is involved in the teaching aspect of the University and convened the ERC Masters’ module on Energy and Climate Change for many years and co-convened the Climate change Mitigation and Adaptation module for the ACDI since its inception. 

Debbie's primary thematic interest in recent years has been future generations (youth), energy and climate change, which has been explored through two small grants which I have been co-investigator on with Jiska De Groot, viz., a Neale Trust fund grant (“Children’s energy behaviours in Cape Town”) and an URC grant (“Children in the transition: understanding energy needs and practices in South Africa”) and which laid the foundation for future work in this area. She is now preparing two papers for publication in this area of interest, while looking for funding for a larger and more long-term project.

Debbie is also involved in the Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) Phase III project of the United National Environment Programme and UNEP/DTU Partnership (which continues until September 2021). UCT is a regional team lead member for Anglophone Africa and I am a co-investigator on this project with Jiska De Groot and play a leading role in reviewing adaptation and mitigation TNAs from 5 countries (Liberia, Sao Tome & Principe, Malawi, Uganda and Ukraine). I also provide desktop & help desk support, conduct country training and co-ordinate training workshops.

Debbie has continued to co-convene the Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation module of the ACDI Masters with Marieke Norton in 2020. This has been a very different year for students as the module has been run entirely online, making use of pre-recorded lectures, zoom sessions and regular WhatsApps with students. It has nonetheless gone very smoothly, in part due to a wonderful group of students!

Anna Taylor is a new Junior Research Fellow at ACDI 

Anna is a human geographer and environmental scientist specializing in urban climate adaptation, with a particular interest in transformative ways of governing water-related risks and vulnerabilities associated with climate change and urbanization. She engages in transdisciplinary research on climate resilient, sustainable urbanism, public decision making and multi-level governance. The research directions she is actively pursuing are: (1) understanding the institutional and organizational requirements for climate resilient urban (ground)water governance; and (2) developing a transdisciplinary methodology for climate-sensitive decision analysis.  

Anna's expertise and experience include: understanding and supporting processes of climate adaptation; participatory methods for exploring risk, vulnerability and resilience, especially in African cities; working in transdisciplinary teams; and engaging in (as well as coordinating) embedded research, case study research and organizational ethnography.

Anna has 15 years of experience working on research and consulting projects of various shapes and sizes, all related in some way to climate risks and adaptation. Anna’s PhD and post-doctoral work focused on climate adaptation in urban contexts, notably in Cape Town, Windhoek, Durban, Harare and Lusaka through the Mistra Urban Futures, CLIMWAYS, FRACTAL, LIRA 2030 and GreenGov projects. She completed her PhD entitled ‘Urban climate adaptation as a process of organisational decision making’ in 2017, engaging in embedded research and combining climate adaptation and decision theory to investigate three empirical cases of urban climate adaptation in the City of Cape Town.

Prior to joining ACDI, Anna worked with the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) and the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at UCT, with whom she has ongoing collaborations. Before joining UCT, Anna worked for the Stockholm Environment Institute, at their office in Oxford, UK.