CV

Name: Stasja Patoelja Koot

Address: Bastion 29, 3067 HC Wageningen, the Netherlands

Date of birth: 27th of September 1974

Place of birth: Utrecht, the Netherlands

Nationality: Dutch

Marital status: Married

Telephone: +31-(0)6-403 90 399

Email: stasjakoot@gmail.com

Education

  • February 2009-October 2013: PhD from the University of Tilburg/African Studies Centre Leiden (external candidate). Keywords: Natural resource management, conservation, tourism, land, marginalization, indigenous people (Bushmen), Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, multi-site ethnography, representation, development, capitalism. Activities:
    • fieldwork in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana
    • fundraising
    • participant observation
    • interviewing in communities, tourism industry, governments and civil society
    • guiding 2 MA students for research in Namibia (Anthropology, University of Leiden and African Studies Centre, University of Leiden)
    • literature studies
    • MA student supervision for research in Namibia, Anthropology, University of Leiden
  • 1999-2001: MA in Environmental Sciences. Specialisation: International sociological profile, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • 1993-2000: MA in Cultural Anthropology. Specialisation: Sustainability, ecology & development; fieldwork for final thesis in Namibia (6 months in 1998/1999), University of Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • 1986-1993: VWO at the Lorentz Lyceum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Work experience

  • September 2015 – August 2018: Lecturer and researcher at Wageningen University. Activities:
    • research in Indonesia, Brazil and, mostly, South Africa. Keywords: wildlife crime, resource extraction, legal/illegal, new technologies, indigeneity, belonging, tourism, ontologies
    • teaching three courses: 1. Cutting Edge; 2. Rural Households and Livelihood Strategies; 3. Technology, development and natural resources
    • 2015-2016: main organizer of the 1st POLLEN conference (Political Ecology Network), a 3-day international conference named PE-3C (Political Ecologies of Conflict, Capitalism and Contestation, Wageningen, the Netherlands Political Ecologies of Conflict, Capitalism and Contestation (PE-3C), in Wageningen, 7-9 July 2016, number of attendants around 400
    • 2015-2018: manager of the global international network POLLEN (Political Ecology Network)
    • Co-supervising three PhD candidates
  • June 2015 – August 2015: Lecturer at Wageningen University, a course named Problem analysis
  • September 2013-August 2015: Postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS, The Hague, the Netherlands) of the Erasmus University (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Staff Group: Rural Development, Environment and Population Studies, in the field of Agrarian, Food and Environmental Studies. Activities:
    • on-going research based on my PhD dissertation
    • new research initiatives on ‘Nature 2.0’; the relation between online and offline socio-economic environments regarding nature conservation
    • graduation students assessments
    • teaching the following lectures (in various courses): ecotourism; environmental colonialism; neoliberal conservation; community-based natural resource management; resource tenure, land tenure and land reform; new conservation paradigms and practices
    • writing and co-authoring fundraising proposals
  • November 2012-October 2013: Tourism and Research Lecturer at the InHolland University of Applied Sciences (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), teaching Dutch and international students. Activities:
    • supervision of graduation students
    • teaching the complete courses: workshop research; intercultural communication; international business cultures and branding; intercultural management; graduation research course
    • supervision of an international research project (Spain) for second year students
      • February 2009-October 2013: Completing a PhD: for details see above under ‘Education’
      • September 2007-March 2012: fundraiser for large grants at the Edukans Foundation (Amersfoort, the Netherlands), an organisation for education in developing countries. Activities:
    • writing fundraising proposals and presenting with a variety of companies/big foundations/grant givers; giving lectures on fundraising; marketing and communication; organizing and accompanying project trips (students in Malawi, a big donor in Kenya, a group of companies in Ethiopia); supervision of 2 MA students with an internship at the Edukans Foundation (University of Amsterdam and VU University Amsterdam)
  • January 2002-July 2007: founder and manager of Treesleeper Camp, a sustainable community based ecotourism project in rural Namibia (www.treesleeper.org). Activities:
    • founding and training a local (Namibian) legal body (CBO)
    • managing international volunteers and local employees
    • national (Namibian) and international fundraising (e.g. Wilde Ganzen, ICCO, Cordaid, NCDO, Namibia Nature Foundation and a variety of embassies)
    • building and maintaining an international network with NGOs, ministries, and donors
    • supervision of 4 BA students for an internship or research at Treesleeper Camp (various Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences)

Publications

Peer reviewed articles

  • Koot, S.P. & Van Beek, W.E.A. (in press). Ju/’hoansi lodging in a Namibian Conservancy: CBNRM, tourism and increasing domination. Conservation and Society.
  • Koot, S., Van Beek, W. & Diemer, J. (in press). The Khwe of Namibia: Foragers between game, tourism and politics. Anthropos.
  • Koot, S.P. (in press). Perpetuating power through autoethnography: My unawareness of research and memories of paternalism among the indigenous Hai//om in Namibia. Critical Arts.
  • Büscher, B., Koot, S. & Nelson, I. (in press). Introduction. Nature 2.0: New Media, Online Activism and the Cyberpolitics of Environmental Conservation. Geoforum.
  • Koot, S.P. (2016). Contradictions of capitalism in the South African Kalahari: Indigenous Bushmen, their brand and Baasskap in tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 24 (8&9), 1211-1226.
  • Koot, S.P. (2015). White Namibians in tourism and the politics of belonging through Bushmen. Anthropology Southern Africa 38 (1&2), 4-15
  • Hüncke, A., & Koot, S. (2012). The presentation of Bushmen in cultural tourism: Tourists’ images of Bushmen and the tourism provider’s presentation of (Hai//om) Bushmen at Treesleeper Camp, Namibia. Critical Arts, 26 (5), 671-689
  • Büscher, B., Van den Breemer, R,. Fletcher, R. & Koot, S. (submitted). Contradictions of the ‘ecotourism script’: Global marketing and local politics in Ghana. Critical Arts.
  • Koot, S.P. & Hitchcock, R.K. (submitted). An indigenous community in the way: Land, leadership, conflict and representation of the Namibian Hai//om. Nomadic Peoples.

Book chapters

  • Koot, S.P. (in press). The Bushman brand in southern African tourism: An indigenous modernity in a neoliberal political economy. In SENRI Ethnological Studies.
  • Koot, S.P. (in press). Poaching. In Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence. ABC-CLIO
  • Koot, S.P. (in press). Ecotourism. In Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence. ABC-CLIO
  • Koot, S.P. (2017). Ecotourism as an indigenous modernity: Namibian Bushmen and two contradictions of capitalism. In H. Kopnina & E. Shoreman-Ouimet (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Environmental Anthropology (pp. 315-326). London: Routledge
  • Koot, S. (2012). Treesleeper Camp: A case study of a community tourism project in Tsintsabis, Namibia. In W. Van Beek & A. Schmidt (Eds.), African Hosts & their Guests: Cultural Dynamics of Tourism (pp. 153-175). Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey

Book reviews

  • Koot, S. (2016). Structural Belonging. Review of At Home in the Okavango: White Batswana Narratives of Emplacement and Belonging, by Catie Gressier. Oxford: Berghahn Books 2015. Current Anthropology, 57 (6): 844-845
  • Koot, S. (2016). Review of Creating Africas: Struggles over nature, conservation and land, by Knut G. Nustad. London: Hurst Publishers, 2015. African Affairs, 115 (460): 580-581

Conference presentations

 

  • 2016: 7 July. Convener and organizer of the full-day panel The political ecology of belonging and indigeneity under neoliberal capitalism, consisting of 13 paper presentations, at the 1st POLLEN conference (Political Ecology Network) named PE-3C (Political Ecologies of Conflict, Capitalism and Contestation), Wageningen, the Netherlands

 

  • 2016: 7-9 July. Contesting indigeneity as a politics of belonging under capitalism: An ecological perspective on land commodification, at the 1st POLLEN conference (Political Ecology Network) named PE-3C (Political Ecologies of Conflict, Capitalism and Contestation, Wageningen, the Netherlands
  • 2015: 7-11 September. The Bushman brand in cultural ecotourism: Indigenous modernities in a neoliberal political economy, at the 11th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Vienna, Austria
  • 2015: 8-10 July. Giving land (back)? The altered meaning of land for Southern Kalahari Bushmen hunter-gatherers in modern South Africa, at the European Conference of African Studies, Paris, France
  • 2015: 24-30 May. The potential for online empowerment and socio-ecological change in capitalism: An exploration of two ‘Nature 2.0’ initiatives, at the Nature 2.0 International writeshop, Cognes, Aosta Valley, Italy
  • 2015: 10 April. Fracking, resistance and belonging: What can we learn from South Africa? At the Political Economy of the Extractive Imperative in Latin America, ISS, The Hague, The Netherlands
  • 2014: 8-10 July. The Khwe of Namibia, foragers between game, tourism and politics, at the Green Economy in the South conference, Dodoma, Tanzania
  • 2014: 18-22 March. Stuck in the Bushman-Baas nexus: Static power relations in Southern African tourism, at the Society For Applied Anthropology (SFAA) conference, Albuquerque, NM, USA
  • 2014: 18-22 March. From dwelling to lodging in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Namibia: The meaning of the changes brought about by conservation and tourism in the Ju/’hoansi’s environment, at the Society For Applied Anthropology (SFAA) conference, Albuquerque, NM, USA

Guest lectures, invited talks, seminars

    • 2016: 24 November. Crisis conservation research plans: Belonging, tourism and the rhino horn crisis (round table together with Bram Büscher and Thomas Kiggell). University of São Paolo, Centre for Nuclear Energy and Agriculture, Piracicaba, Brazil.
    • 2016: 28 September. An indigenous ontology on land and the politics of belonging through Bushmen (invited talk for the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARCHi) for the Cosmopolitan Karoo Sustainable Development Research Group at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology). Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
    • 2015: 6 March. Trapped in tourism: Bushmen in contemporary Namibia (invited talk at the Seminar: Namibia, 25 Years of Independence). African Studies Centre, Leiden
    • 2014: 2 December. Fracking in South Africa and the documentary Unearthed (seminar leader and organizer). ISS, Erasmus University, The Hague
    • 2014: 16-17 October. Land, food and natural resources at the 12th Development Dialogue Conference (DD): ‘Rethinking Democracy: Challenges for global and local governance’ (seminar leader). ISS, Erasmus University, The Hague
    • 2013: 24 October. Kalahari capers: Researching the Bushmen (seminar leader). African Studies Centre, University of Leiden

 

  • 2013: 27 May. Bushmen business as usual? (guest lecture), at the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden

 

    • 2013: 17 September. Bushmen business in community tourism (guest lecture), at the InHolland Haarlem University of Applied Sciences
    • 2012: 16 November. Bushmen business as usual? (guest lecture), at the VU University, Amsterdam
    • 2011: 27 October. The Bushman, the tourist and the elephant: The dynamics of marginalised groups in tourism. ISS, Erasmus University, Research in Progress Seminar.

 

  • 2010: 29 June. Ethnography (guest lecture), University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban (lecture given at Witdraai, Northern Cape Province, South Africa)
  • 2010: 21 June. The dynamics of marginalised groups in tourism: Bushmen, wildlife parks and tourism, University of KwaZulu Natal, the Kimberley seminars, Kimberley, South Africa.

 

  • 2010: Fundraising (guest lecture), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
  • 2009: Fundraising (guest lecture), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
  • 2005: 7 September. Treesleeper Camp: A case study of community-based tourism (guest lecture), University of Namibia

Media and popular

Several non-academic publications in popular magazines, newspapers and travel guides (e.g. Indigo Magazine, Te Gast in Namibië) and work-related interviews (e.g. Metro, Global Dutch, NRC and NRC Next, HoeZoRadio)

Peer reviewing

Conservation & Society (2013); Anthropological Forum (2014); Environmental Communication (2015); Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology (2016); Geoforum (2016); Conservation & Society (2016; 2016)

PhD proposal reviewing

WASS, anonymous (2016)

Research grants

Grants received for PhD fieldwork from World Wildlife Fund (2010), Stichting IIC (Internationale Informatie en Communicatie) (2010), Maria Strootfonds (2010), Emmaus Haarzuilens (2010), Gaia Nature Fund (2010) and Stichting FEMI (Foundation for Earth, Mankind and Initiative) (2010)

Other relevant experiences and skills

 

  • Throughout the years I have shown a strong affinity with education and science by giving guest lectures and guiding interns at BA and MA level, for example at the University of Namibia, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the University of KwaZulu Natal, the University of Amsterdam, the Free University of Amsterdam, African Studies Centre, University of Leiden
  • 2014-Today: Consultant for 2Roads about a recycling project in Senegal (www.2roads.eu)
  • 2013: Discussion leader of the seminar ‘Kalahari Capers: Researching the Bushmen’, African Studies Centre, University of Leiden
  • 2010-Today: Research affiliate of the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa
  • 2007-Today: Advisor of the Connected to Namibia Foundation (www.namibie.biz)

 

  • 2004-2013: Chairman of the Foundation for Sustainable Tourism in Namibia
  • 2000: organisation of a seminar ‘Tourism in Africa’ at the faculty Cultural Anthropology at the University of Utrecht
  • 1995-1996: one year of ‘work & travel’ in Australia, New Zealand & Southeast Asia
  • Languages:

Dutch fluent in speaking and writing

      English fluent in speaking and writing

      Afrikaans (South Africa/Namibia) fluent in speaking and writing

      German good in speaking, reasonable in writing

      French reasonable in speaking, average in writing

      Hai//om (or Khoekhoegarab) basic skills

 

  • Computer skills: MS Office
  • Strong social skills, intercultural communication
  • Literature, running, yoga

 

Referees

 

  • Prof. Dr. W.E.A. van Beek (University of Tilburg and African Studies Centre Leiden), Email: w.e.a.vanbeek@uvt.nl, Phone: +31-(0)13-4663551 (Tilburg), +31-(0)71-5276641 (Leiden), +31-(0)6-31388739 (cell phone)
  • Prof. Dr. K. Tomaselli (University of Kwazulu Natal, Durban, South Africa—Centre for Communication, Media and Society), Email: tomasell@ukzn.ac.za, Phone: +27-(0)31-260 2635 (Durban), +27-(0)77-33950621 (cell phone)

 

  • Prof. Dr. T. Widlok (University of Cologne), Email: Thomas.Widlok@mpi.nl or thomas.widlok@uni-koeln.de
  • Prof. Dr. Robert Hitchcock (University of New Mexico), Email: rkhitchcock@gmail.com
  • Dr. Bram Büscher (Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University), Email: buscher@iss.nl