Alex Lenferna is a post-doctoral research fellow at Nelson Mandela University in the Department of Development Studies – on a National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Fellowship. He is also the elected general secretary and co-founder of the Climate Justice Coalition – a South African coalition of civil society, grassroots, trade union and community-based organisations working together to advance a transformative climate justice agenda. Alex co-hosts Just Us and the Climate, a coalition podcast which aims to bring climate change back down to earth to show how it’s not only a crisis, but also an opportunity to build a better, more just world. 

Alex has dedicated over a dozen years to studying, researching, writing, teaching, and activism on environmental and social justice, with a strong focus on climate and energy justice. He has been a Mandela Rhodes, Fulbright, and Endeavour Scholar, through which he has worked, taught, and studied in South Africa, the United States, and Australia. He holds a PhD focused on climate and energy justice from the University of Washington. Alex has published over a dozen academic publications and nearly one hundred opinion & analysis pieces in outlets such as the Mail & Guardian, the Sowetan, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Jacobin, the Seattle Times, and the Conversation.

Alex’s research and writing is freely available on Academia.edu here. He is currently working on a book project entitled, Overthrowing Eco-Apartheid: And Winning a World Worth Fighting For. If you’re interested in connecting, you can contact Alex at: alexlenferna [at] gmail dot com, or connect on Twitter or Facebook, which he uses to share content on social, environmental, and climate justice. Alex is based in Johannesburg and is a first generation South African, whose family hails from Mauritius. He speaks fluent English, intermediate French, Spanish, & Afrikaans, and is learning isiZulu. If you want to learn more about Alex and his work, you can also read his short online bio.