Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development and Change group at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg, Research Associate at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of Stellenbosch University.
He held a Van Zyl Slabbert visiting professorship at the University of Cape Town from April to June 2017. From 2008 to 2015, he was Assistant and later Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainable Development at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Bram received his PhD (cum laude) from the VU University Amsterdam in 2009 and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa from September 2008 to January 2012.
From 2008 to 2015, he was Assistant and later Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainable Development at the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Bram received his PhD (cum laude) from the VU University Amsterdam in 2009 and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa from September 2008 to January 2012.
His research interests revolve around the political economy of conservation and development, with particular interests in the politics of nature, energy and extraction, ecotourism, new media, violence and social theory. In 2011, he received an NWO (Dutch Research Foundation) Veni grant for a research project entitled ‘Nature 2.0: The Political Economy of Conservation in Online and Southern African Environments’.
In 2015, he was awarded an NWO Vidi grant to investigate Crisis Conservation situations in Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa together with three PhDs and two postdocs. Most recently, together with Robert Fletcher, he led an international team of researchers that obtained a 1,3 million Euro Belmont Forum ‘Transformations to Sustainability’ grant to investigate the possibilities for a new ‘convivial conservation’ paradigm.
Bram has published over 75 articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and is the author of ‘Transforming the Frontier. Peace Parks and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Africa’ (Duke University Press, 2013). He (co-) edited 8 books and special issues and is co-author, together with Robert Fletcher, of ‘The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond The Anthropocene’, forthcoming with Verso in 2020. Since 2012, Bram is one of the senior editors of the open-access journal Conservation & Society ().
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