We examine human nature as an interspecies relationship using human-elephant and baboon-human relations as a starting point. In this work, we investigate how media discourses and digital inclusion gaps shape these relations and influence policy. Some current projects include the politics of absence in NGO communication strategies, subversive counter-narratives that challenges colonial discourses/imaginaries that exclude local people from nature during a viral human-elephant conflict incident, and a critical analysis of generative AI imaginings of African nature, Questioning conservation: Analysing parliamentary questions related to conservation in South Africa (2019-2024), and baboon-human relations in the Cape Peninsula.
Principal Investigator: Dr Christel Antonites