Nicoli Nattrass (Economic Policy and Inequality Advisor) is a professor of economics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and a regular visiting professor at Yale. She is also the co-director of the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa (iCWild) at UCT where her work focuses on community-based natural resource management in Southern Africa, human-wildlife conflict (especially between livestock farmers and predators) and environmentally sustainable practices.

Prof. Nattrass is a development specialist who has published widely on the labour market, the political economy of growth and trajectories of development. Her most recent book, co-authored with Jeremy Seekings (Inclusive Dualism: Labour-intensive development, Decent Work and Surplus Labour in Southern Africa, 2019, Oxford University Press) highlights the relationship between job creation and poverty reduction.

Prof. Nattrass also has a long-standing research focus on the political economy of health, initially AIDS and the scientific governance of medicine, and more recently the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. She has twice won the UCT book award: in 2005 for ‘The Moral Economy of AIDS in South Africa’, and in 2014 for ‘The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back’.

Prof. Nattrass is an interdisciplinary scholar with a strong orientation towards problem-driven research. She conducts mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) research including conducting and analysing social surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, and historical research.