I’m trained as a City and Regional Planner and have on-the-ground experience as a social and environmental development practitioner.

Born in Germany, I have lived and worked in South Africa since 1991 where I currently work as a lecturer in City & Regional Planning at the University of Cape Town. Prior to that I was based in local government, the City of Cape Town, working in ‘Environmental Resource Management’. I have also worked with the private sector, NGOs, and conservation agencies. My research interests center around the role of nature in human affairs.

Working in different sectors has nurtured my fascination with in-between spaces and bridging different disciplines, knowledges, perspectives and ways of being in the world. I love socially transformative practices that bring more life, more warmth, and more charge.

I am preoccupied with reconnecting ecological questions to an expanded sense of care, responsibility and obligation. Learning Goethean phenomenology and integral approaches has given me fresh eyes.

Beside strong social-environmental interests, I love enduring sporting activities and movement. I am a dedicated Iyengar yoga practitioner. I am passionate about traveling, languages, alternative health care, and the arts. My latest adventure has been into motherhood – an ongoing beautiful learning journey.

Here is one of my favorite quotes and a mantra to live by:

“So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don’t like, what we don’t want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don’t want, what we don’t like, what we want to change. So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life. (…) I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of ‘connection’ that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected.” – Julia Butterfly Hill , The Taoist and the Activist, 2005

“What day is it?” asked Pooh

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet

“My favorite day”, said Pooh.

I can be reached at Tania.katzschner@uct.ac.za