Eco-Media in Urban Kenya

My research focuses on tree planting and urban forest protection in Nairobi, Kenya, in response to climate urgency and encroachment upon the city’s green spaces. My focus on eco-media involves the exploration of how tree planting and urban forest protection are being communicated across digital platforms, and how this relates back to material realities. I am grappling with how environmental responsibility is allocated, undertaken, and shirked through tree growing and urban forest conservation in Nairobi, as a mismatch between how environmental work is presented and how it is practiced has real-world implications. By interweaving an online focus and grounded, in-person ethnography, this research takes a deeper look at the interplay between tree planting and protection as digitally represented and physically enacted.

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Doctoral Candidate: Amber Caine

I am a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, focused on tree planting and climate urgency in urban Kenya, under the supervision of Prof. Katrien Pype (KU Leuven) and co-supervision of Prof. Cajetan Iheka (Yale University). My academic background is primarily in anthropology. I received my Bachelor of Social Science in Social Anthropology and Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2014. More recently, I completed my Honour’s and Master’s degrees in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2021 and 2023 respectively. My Honour’s research focused on microblogging South African mothers’ ‘public’ presentation of ‘private’ experiences. My Master’s research explored South African student narratives of remote university education during the COVID-19 pandemic, attuning to the lessons learnt through upheaval and adaptation. Following my interest in the dynamics between the "virtual" and the "actual", my PhD research will examine how tree planting - for environmental restoration and carbon offsetting - is both presented online and physically engaged in.