Dr Michela Marcatelli

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Name: Michela Marcatelli
Location: D3 LAB 335 Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
  Staff Members

Contact Details:

Email: michelam@uj.ac.za

About Dr Michela Marcatelli

​Qualifications

PhD Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

MA Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

MA Local and International Development and Cooperation Studies (University of Bologna, Italy)

BA International Development and Cooperation Studies (University of Bologna, Italy)

Biographical

Prior to my PhD, I received two master’s degrees in Development studies, one from the School of Political Sciences of the University of Bologna and the other from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague. As a postgraduate student, I developed a profound and interdisciplinary interest in water-related issues with a geographic focus on South Africa, which brought me to conduct extensive fieldwork in the country. In my PhD, I used water as an entry point to show how under neoliberalism inequality has not only continued and increased, but it has also become normalized and naturalized. Evidence for my arguments was drawn from a political ecology analysis of the Waterberg plateau, in the Limpopo Province. My current research builds on and expands my PhD, in that it looks at the relationships between water and energy issues around the development of Medupi power station.

Research interests

Political ecology

Water

Land

Critical conservation studies

Publications

Marcatelli, M. (forthcoming 2018) ‘The land-water nexus: A critical perspective from South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy.

Marcatelli, M. (2015) ‘Suspended redistribution: “Green Economy” and water inequality in the Waterberg, South Africa’, Third World Quarterly 36(12): 2244-2258.

De Gaay Fortman, B. and M. Marcatelli (2015) ‘Between soft legality and strong legitimacy: A political economy approach to the struggle for basic entitlements to safe water and sanitation’, Human Rights Quarterly 37(4): 941-976.

Marcatelli, M. (2007) ‘Accesso all’acqua e lotta alla povertà nel Sud Africa post-apartheid. Il caso di Queenstown’, Afriche e Orienti 9(3-4): 176-184.