Over the past few weeks, research findings from the Unruly Natures project has reached a broader scientific community. First and foremost, we congratulate Kinga on publishing her first peer-reviewed article as a first author!
Titled Control or coexist with urban baboons: Exploring residents’ views and values in Cape Town, the article is openly accessible in the journal Conservation Science and Practice as well as under the Outputs tab on this website. The article is based on data collected during Kinga’s MSc thesis (prior to our 2023 survey), and investigates what characterises different perspectives on baboons, and what values underpin them. While this study is not a representative sample of all residents on the Cape Peninsula, it helps shed light on why and how polarisation sometimes occur – and where common ground can be found.
In other news, both Kinga and Johan recently presented work at the scientific conference PECS-3: Pathways to Sustainability: Social-ecological resilience and transformation across multiple scales, which took place 12-15 August in Montréal, Canada. Kinga shared findings from her fresh-off-the-press article we just mentioned, and Johan co-organised a symposium about using arts-based methods in sustainability science. To give the audience a sense of what working with Empatheatre can look like and why we do it, we also shared a short video made by our filmmaker Odendaal Esterhuyse.
Unruly Natures Project 