Dr Michelle Pressend

Dr. Michelle Pressend is the Academic Coordinator of the African Regional Hub of the Transnational Centre for Just Transitions in Energy, Climate and Sustainability (TRAJECTS), a DAAD-funded climate centre housed within the Energy Systems Research Group at UCT, which is a partnership with two universities in Colombia and Germany. TRAJECTS’ main objective is to focus on climate change mitigation in the following key sustainability and just transition areas: the phasing out of fossil fuels and shifts towards a post-fossil energy system, as well as ecosystem restoration through fundamental shifts in land use and management. She previously lectured in Environmental Sociology in UCT’s Department of Sociology.

Before entering academia, she spent over two decades in the non-governmental sector, engaging in research, policy analysis, and activism with a focus on environmental and socio-economic justice. She also served in South Africa’s national government during the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Through a relational lens, her work and research interests investigate colonial power dynamics, materialities, politics, extractivism, and the social relations and exclusions often embedded in dominant narratives of energy and climate change responses. Her scholarship is grounded in values of respect, regeneration, and reciprocity, which she views as essential to cultivating just and sustainable futures.

Qualifications
BSc (Botany and Biochemistry UWC), BSc Honours (Botany UWC), MSc (Conservation Biology UCT), Graduate Certificate in Economics (WITS), PhD (Anthropology specialising in Environmental Humanity UCT)

Michelle’s 2023 PhD thesis dissertation was on ‘Alternatives to the economic rationalisation of renewable energy transition: The Tsitsikamma Community Renewable Wind Farm Story.’

Publications
Pressend M (2025). Postcolonial and/or Decolonial Perceptions in Framing Different Responses to the Climate Crisis, in Climate Change and the Postcolonial. Eds Aïda C. Terblanché-Greeff, Jörn Ahrens, Elisabeth Alm. Srpinger Vs

Pressend M (2025). Windscapes: Frontiers of Green Energy Capital Accumulation in South Africa in Reclaiming African Environmentalism: Ecological Struggles for wellbeing and Habitability edited by Green, L., Matose, F., Matusse, A., and Solomon, HSRC Press.

Pressend M (2024) The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Energy Transitions: Channelling Renewable Energy into New Frontiers of Capital Accumulation in South Africa Confronts the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era- Challenges, Pathways & Possibilities, edited by Patel, Mthembu & Hlatshwayo, University of South Africa Press UNISA.

Pressend M (2023). Green Masquerade: Neo-liberalism, Extractive Renewable Energy Transitions, and the “Good” Anthropocene in South Africa, International Development Policy, 2023. doi:10.4000/poldev.5695) .

Pressend, M. (2018). Silenced: The need to amplify rural women’s ‘voices’ in South Africa’s renewable energy pathway, South Africa Labour Bulletin, Umaynano Publications

Pressend, M. (2014). Corporate Capture in Southern African Infrastructure Development, Amandla, Issue No.35 August/September 2014

Pressend, M. (2014). Transforming Global Governance Institutions: Toward Public Interest? Theme: Reforming Global Governance Institutions, Papers of the Fifth BRICS Academic Forum, BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Development, Integration and Industrialisation, Published by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, South Africa

Pressend, M. (2011). Overcoming Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation Implementation in Southern Africa, Chapter 8: Financial Barriers to Adaptation Implementation: A South African Case Study on Financing Water Adaptation, Institute for Global Dialogue. www.igd.org.za