Benedict Edith

Edith Benedict works as an assistant lecturer for the Department of Geography, University of Dar es salaam, Tanzania. She obtained her MSc. Degree in Natural Resources Assessment and Management and B.A. Degree in Geography and Environmental Studies, both from the University of Dar es Salaam. Her research interests are broadly on natural resources governance, rural livelihoods and transformations. 

Edith is currently enrolled as a PhD fellow at the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania and University of Copenhagen (UoC) under Livestock in the Forest project (LIVEFOR), funded by DANIDA (http://drp.dfcentre.com/project/including-pastoralism-in-community-forests-tanzania/). Her research project explores the governance livestock grazing in Tanzania’s Village Land Forest Reserves (VLFRs). Particularly, she seeks to understand political-economic rationalities of ex (including) pastoralists in the use and management of village land forest reserves (VLFRs), analyse the institutional dynamics and arrangements through which access to grazing land is regulated in and around VLFRs; and assess how livelihoods of both pastoralists and non-pastoralists communities are affected under such processes.

Before joining the Department of Geography, Edith served as a Programme Officer for the Centre for Climate Change Studies (CCCS), University of Dar es Salaam, and as intern for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Tanzania Country Offices where here research experience and interests were nurtured.

She aspires to become a critical African scholar in human geography. She believes that her participation to the PLAAS- Spring School in Political Economy and Political Ecology will foster her academic and research career and enhance critical  scholarship on agrarian change in Africa