Current students
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Melissa Strydom (PhD Candidate)
Melissa is an attorney with more than 13 years post-admission experience, mostly in corporate compliance and litigation with a focus on environmental law. Her PhD thesis, titled The use and impact of criminal sanctions for environmental law transgressions in industrial facilities: Determining the boundaries of over-criminalization (submitted 2022), sought to determine whether the use of criminal sanctions for environmental transgressions in industrial facilities in South Africa has led to overcriminalization. She further identified guiding criteria for determining when criminal sanctions would be appropriate and effective in an environmental context. Her thesis tracked the frequent amendments to criminal law provisions in four selected South African environmental laws and specific offence categories and considered 53 concluded prosecutions relating to such offences. She also interviewed 32 respondents engaged with environmental compliance and enforcement in South Africa. Her thesis contains the most up-to-date, empirically informed, and comprehensive account of the use of the criminal sanction in South African environmental law.
Melissa submitted her thesis for examination February 2022.
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Ntombifuthi (Futhi) Nxumalo (PhD Candidate)
Futhi is a natural science professional with extensive working experience in the mining industry across various mineral commodities (i.e. gold, coal and diamonds) and the energy sector. She has a broad background in geology, Life of Asset Planning (LoAP), mineral regulation, sustainable mining and sustainability. Her PhD research, titled South Africa’s coal mine closures: An enabling regulatory framework for post-closure land-use to support self-reliant mining communities explores the role of current South Africa’s mineral laws and regulatory framework in achieving sustainable post-mining land uses (PMLUs) towards self-reliant mining communities. The research also reviews an active mine closure site, Tshikondeni Coal Mine in Limpopo Province.
Futhi submitted her thesis for examination in April 2022.
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Allan Meso (PhD Candidate)
Allan Meso is an environmental lawyer at the United Nations Environment Programme, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Allan’s work centres on environmental crime, development of the environmental rule of law and promoting the development and implementation of safer chemical and hazardous substance governance frameworks. His PhD thesis, titled Protecting human health and the environment through sustainable chemicals management: An analysis of Kenya’s legal framework, develops a normative and operational frame for sustainable chemicals management to evaluate the adequacy of the governance framework for chemicals in Kenya.
Allan successfully defended his proposal in May 2022.
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Tim van der Merwe (PhD candidate)
Tim is a practising attorney and a PhD candidate focusing on water law in South Africa. His research looks at the National Water Act, Water Services Act and municipal legislation in an effort to determine why the ideal of water equity (as it relates to service delivery) is not being given effect to in many areas around the country. Tim will place emphasis on local knowledge and will be conducting interviews in the Amathole District Municipality in an effort to provide practical solutions, founded in South Africa’s constitution and water-related legislation, to resolve the water service delivery crisis.
Tim successfully defended his proposal in June 2022.
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Felicia Ikpokonte (PhD candidate)
Felicia Ikpokonte has a broad background in law and is keenly interested in social justice, dispute resolution, and the environment. She is committed to using the law to resolve social and environmental issues in a manner that promotes human dignity and environmental sustainability. Her PhD research addresses the relationship between the environmental legal framework and the resolution of environmental disputes in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria. She intends exploring the extent to which patterns in the resolution of environmental disputes between oil companies and host communities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria are informed by the environmental legal framework and the import of the patterns for environmental sustainability and the right to a safe and sustainable environment in the region. Insights from her research will inform legislative reforms that will stimulate positive development in the oil and gas industry and engender sustainable utilization of environmental resources and the effective protection of the environment.
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Ruchir Naidoo (PhD candidate)
Ruchir is a practising advocate and a PhD candidate interested in pollution laws and waste management practices within the Global South and particularly South Africa. The intended research focusses on the burgeoning issue of Marine Plastic Litter and how a ‘Just Transition’ towards a Circular Economy could potentially address this crisis. Towards this end, Ruchir will critique the Circular Economy policies and related initiatives that exist at an international level. Which will then inform his understanding of what is the best practicable (environmental) option for South Africa – which he envisions as one that involves a new approach to legislative frameworks, improves resource productivity, promotes sustainable consumption, progressive waste management and reduces the environmental impacts usually associated with plastics. Ruchir is co-supervised by Dr Mpho Bapela.
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Zunaida Wadiwala (LLM by dissertation candidate)
With global climate change having reached a level of a climate emergency and this bringing with it a surge of cases, Zunaida’s research focuses on climate litigation leading to climate governance and considers the impact and role of transnationalism in climate litigation. At its core, the goal of her research is to uncover what contribution, if any, litigation in South Africa and in Africa has made to global climate litigation and governance. Zunaida’s research interrogates the claims of transnationalism in African climate litigation and inter alia considers how, if at all, have North centred judgements cognised the impacts of judgement’s in Africa as contributing to global climate litigation.
Zunaida successfully defended her proposal in October 2021