Charis Enns

Charis Enns is a Presidential Fellow in Socio-Environmental Systems at the Global Development Institute. Her work focuses on how processes of change – such as environmental change, land use change and livelihood change – alter human-animal interactions. Her current funded research projects focus on:

• Pathways to inclusive biodiversity conservation, working alongside pastoralist organisations and communities in Kenya to evidence and promote community stewardship over biodiversity (2023-2027);
• The potential of developing high-integrity, community-led and -owned biodiversity credit and carbon credit markets (2025-2028);
• Citizen science and community-engaged research on One Health, emphasing the interconnectedness of the health of people, animals, plants, and their shared environment (2023-2026);
• Community land rights, rights of nature and historical land injustices (ongoing).

Her active research projects are global in scope, but Charis' currently works primarily in Eastern and Southern Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.

Charis' research sits at the intersection of critical development studies, human, environmental and animal geographies, and political ecology. Her approach to research is politically engaged and influenced by the scholar-activism tradition, placing emphasis on collaborative and collective learning, reflection and action.

Charis recently published Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya (University of Toronto Press, 2024). The book is available open access, and can be downloaded here (as of April 2024).

Charis is the lead for Inclusive and Propsperous Futures for Sustainable Futures at the University of Manchester. Charis also co-convenes the Human-Animal Research Network at the University of Manchester.

Charis is eager to work with PhD students and Post-Doctoral Researchers interested in how human-animal relations are changing in areas undergoing rapid change, as a result of environmental change, land use change, urbanisaiton or related trends.