Dr Christiaan van Schalkwyk is the Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDRF) for the Climate Justice Centred-Approach to Environmental Impact Assessment in Rural Southern Africa (EIA4ClimateJustice) synthesis research team, co-led by Associate Professor Melanie Murcott and Ncedo Mngqibisa. He holds a BA (Law), BA Hons (English), LLB, and LLD from Stellenbosch University.
In 2019, Christiaan received the EP Bradlow Human Rights Bursary to pursue his LLM, which was subsequently upgraded to an LLD in 2020. His doctoral research, supervised by Professor Sandra Liebenberg, focused on developing the interdependence between socio-economic rights and environmental rights in South African law through the concept of sustainable development. His thesis was titled Integrating Environmental Considerations in Socio-Economic Rights Adjudication: The Role of Ecologically Sustainable Development.
Before joining ASCEND, Christiaan was a research and teaching assistant at the HF Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law at Stellenbosch University. He continues to advocate for interlinking human and environmental rights normatively and institutionally to promote climate justice for disadvantaged, vulnerable, and marginalised groups.