Tsitsi Mpofu-Mketwa

Dr Tsitsi Mpofu-Mketwa joined the Future Water Institute as postdoctoral fellow on the UKRI GCRF Water and Fire Project in September 2020. Her PhD thesis in Sociology of Development at UCT investigated how isiXhosa-speaking women traders in Langa Township, Cape Town, exercised agency in responding to structural constraints and opportunities that affected their informal trading businesses. Tsitsi has experience in applied community research and social development practice in the Cape Flats marginalised communities. Tsitsi has worked in different research units at UCT including the Gender Health and Justice Research Unit, Energy Research Centre, Poverty Inequality Initiative and Centre for Higher Education  on projects relating to violence against women and girls, child and youth wellbeing, energy use, climate change adaptation and Higher education equity access. She has taught courses relating environmental sustainability, globalisation, development and poverty. Tsitsi‘s research interests are in human adaptation to structural and environmental constraints in an increasingly globalised and neoliberal world, sustainable livelihoods, individual and collective agency.