Dr Sikhululekile Ncube

Skhue is an Environmental Scientist with over 10 years of experience in development practice and research, including 8 years of post-doctoral work on interdisciplinary consortium projects across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Her areas of expertise include climate change adaptation and resilience building, ecosystem services, natural capital valuation, water resources management/river catchment management, stakeholder engagement and geospatial analysis. She obtained her academic qualifications from Zimbabwe (BSc), The Netherlands (MSc) and the UK (PhD).

Currently, Skhue is a Research Fellow in a MRC funded public health project (Chitetezo) in Malawi, aimed at improving road safety and reducing road traffic collisions among young people in Blanytre, Malawi. She previously worked on a GCRF project focussing on water and fire environmental hazards in informal settlements in Cape Town (South Africa). Skhue has also worked on a climate change adaptation project in India, Bangladesh and Ghana at the University of Dundee, a water resources management project in India (NERC funded) and an urban flood resilience project in the UK at Heriot-Watt University (EPSRC funded). Notably, she was part of the Heriot-Watt University team that successfully bid to conduct a review of the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership (CREW funded) to inform partnership working in the water sector in Scotland.

She has been able to integrate physical and social sciences in her work and comfortably adjusted to diverse multicultural environments. Her diverse work experience has equipped her with a wide range of skills including project management, managing partnerships, building effective networks, collaborative working and teamwork. Collaborative working with multidisciplinary teams has been a core aspect of all her work. She is also skilled in fieldwork planning, data (both quantitative and qualitative) collection and analysis using various methods. Skhue is highly competent in IT skills across a wide range of software and programmes e.g. ArcGIS, QGIS, FRAGSTAT, NVivo and Microsoft Office etc.

Before her PhD, Skhue worked in the NGO sector in Southern Africa where she implemented humanitarian and development projects, and facilitated capacity-building and training workshops for various stakeholders, including local communities, farmers, government agencies and local authorities. Academic background: • PhD from the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee. Her PhD was on ecosystem services assessment in the Tweed Catchment (Scottish Borders, Scotland). • MSc (with a distinction) in Environmental Science from UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands.
• BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science and Health from the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe. • A Postgraduate Diploma in Development and Disaster Management from the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe.

Water Resources Management Catchment Management Climate Change adaptation Ecosystem services Nature Based Solutions Biodiversity assessments Stakeholder engagement Geospatial Analysis