van der Merwe, Antoinette, Dr.

Antoinette van der Merwe, currently working as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Pretoria, SDG Hub, where she works on topics related to waste, sanitation and early childhood development in low-income communities in South Africa. She completed a Ph.D under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Isabel Günther, at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) and the Centre for Development and Cooperation (DEC). Antoinette’s PhD focused on various ways to create cleaner and safer gold supply chains, such as increasing the amount recycled gold in an urban mining project in Switzerland and working with artisanal miners in Burkina Faso to increase the use of personal protective gear.

Previously she worked as a lecturer in Environmental Economics and Introduction to Microeconomics at the University of South Africa (Unisa) and most recently as research and teaching assistant at the Chair of Development Economics at the ETH Zurich. She completed a BA Value and Policy Studies and a BCom Economic Honours degree, at the University of Stellenbosch and her MCom Economics degree at the North West University (Potchesfroom).