Eric Makombe is a mid-career academic and lecturer in Economic History and Development. Eric is a Research Fellow in the History Department at the University of the Free State (South Africa) and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems at the University of Zimbabwe. Eric was a Visiting Professor at Lund University in Sweden for a couple of months in 2014. He holds a PhD (History) from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. His broad research interests are in urban history, human economy and livelihoods, rural-urban linkages, climate change and rural development. Some of his published articles have appeared in the Journal of Developing Societies, Global Environment, Historia and Essays in Economic and BusinessHistory. Eric has also co-edited two edited volumes as well as contributed book chapters to several manuscripts. Eric has received research grants and awards from CODESRIA, IFAS (French Institute of South Africa), the Land Deal Politics Initiative, DAAD NELGA Corona Research Fellowship, DAAD Climate Research for Alumni and Postdocs in Africa, and the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA research grant. Eric presently is a recipient of the ISRF-MPIWG Collaborative Fellowship Award in which he engages with recent global environmental scholarly debates on the best-suited option that a less developed country such as Zimbabwe can adopt between adaptation and mitigation measures that simultaneously ensure sustainable long-term development. Overall, Eric’s research agenda is informed by an intense commitment to socially useful scholarship which is expected to constitute a body of innovative knowledge, contributing both to the empirical development of comparative studies as well as pragmatic and workable solutions to rural sustainability and economic livelihoods.

Biographical details correct as of 18.09.24