van der Merwe, Antoinette, Dr.
Antoinette van der Merwe is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of the Western Cape.
She completed her PhD at the Development Economics Group in 2022, focusing on creating cleaner and safer gold supply chains from Switzerland to Burkina Faso.
Her research covers topics in development economics, environmental sustainability, and behavioural economics. She is particularly interested in understanding the impact of poor waste management on low-income communities and how improved waste systems, such as increased household cooperation and development of community-based waste management approaches, can enhance well-being and health in vulnerable communities in South Africa.
Before her current role, she held positions as a lecturer in Environmental Economics and Introduction to Microeconomics at the University of South Africa (Unisa), as a research assistant at the Chair of Development Economics at ETH Zurich, and as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s SDG Hub.