Linda Downsborough

Linda Downsborough is the Head of Environmental Science at the Independent Institute of Education, a private higher education institution in Johannesburg South Africa. She is also a PhD student at the ELRC at Rhodes University.

As a lecturer and researcher Linda has been integral to designing, co-ordinating and lecturing on a number of water related education programmes at the IIE and has worked on a number of externally funded research grants.

Linda’s passion for the environment started growing up in Zambia and travelling to many of southern Africa’s national parks in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. She completed her honours in environmental science at Rhodes university working with conservancies (voluntary conservation organisations). From this research her interest in what drives people to voluntarily participate in conservation activities laid the foundation for her masters dissertation which investigated social learning process within a citrus farming community of practice.  

Her current doctoral research is contextualised within the Vhembe Biosphere reserve, one of the case study areas of the Transects project. Her study explores the potential for social network analysis to be used as an educational tool to enhance learning and competency building for various stakeholders within the biosphere reserve context.

Linda is passionate about learning, adult education, social networks and communities of practice all within a natural resource management context and has a number of publications in these fields. She believes that by facilitating and nurturing the connections between people there is enhanced capacity for mutually beneficial decision-making.