Amber Abrams
Amber Abrams, PhD, Carnegie DEAL Junior Research Fellow at Future Water, University of Cape Town
Amber Abrams is currently a Carnegie DEAL Junior Research Fellow at Future Water (FW), a transdisciplinary research institute at the University of Cape Town since 2021. Amber was a postdoctoral fellow at FW since 2018, and a PhD research fellow/graduate teacher at the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, Canterbury UK with research focused on wellbeing on the boundaries of protected natural areas in northern Limpopo (South Africa). Amber’s training is in medical/environmental anthropology and public health, and prior to undertaking her PhD research, she was a senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council focused on clinical trials (registration, ethics and lived experiences). Currently, Amber’s work spans a number of projects including experimenting with research methods around water (arts-based and embodied methods), the development of a Health Vulnerability indicator framework for the context of Extreme Weather Events in Southern Africa; the hosting of an online ‘Museum of watery relations’; engaged and interactive exhibitions to sensitize citizen scientists to their relations in the watery flows of Cape Town, specifically attending to water as a human right and to our places in the Source-to-Sea hydro-social-cycles; and engaged research on citizens involved in water sensitive urban design interventions – to name a few projects. Amber supervises MPH students at UCT in the Environment and Health stream and continues to collaborate with the Health Systems and the Environment and Health research units at the South African Medical Research Council. Amber aspires to continue to work at the interface of environmental and human health concerns in engaged/participatory ways, as well as working to develop a cohort of researchers that she has been mentoring whose skills combine systematic reviewing, evidence-based assessments and data synthesis, with social sciences, ethnographic inquiry and critical engagement.
Amber Abrams, PhD, Carnegie DEAL Junior Research Fellow at Future Water, University of Cape Town
Amber Abrams is currently a Carnegie DEAL Junior Research Fellow at Future Water (FW), a transdisciplinary research institute at the University of Cape Town since 2021. Amber was a postdoctoral fellow at FW since 2018, and a PhD research fellow/graduate teacher at the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, Canterbury UK with research focused on wellbeing on the boundaries of protected natural areas in northern Limpopo (South Africa). Amber’s training is in medical/environmental anthropology and public health, and prior to undertaking her PhD research, she was a senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council focused on clinical trials (registration, ethics and lived experiences). Currently, Amber’s work spans a number of projects including experimenting with research methods around water (arts-based and embodied methods), the development of a Health Vulnerability indicator framework for the context of Extreme Weather Events in Southern Africa; the hosting of an online ‘Museum of watery relations’; engaged and interactive exhibitions to sensitize citizen scientists to their relations in the watery flows of Cape Town, specifically attending to water as a human right and to our places in the Source-to-Sea hydro-social-cycles; and engaged research on citizens involved in water sensitive urban design interventions – to name a few projects. Amber supervises MPH students at UCT in the Environment and Health stream and continues to collaborate with the Health Systems and the Environment and Health research units at the South African Medical Research Council. Amber aspires to continue to work at the interface of environmental and human health concerns in engaged/participatory ways, as well as working to develop a cohort of researchers that she has been mentoring whose skills combine systematic reviewing, evidence-based assessments and data synthesis, with social sciences, ethnographic inquiry and critical engagement.