With great pleasure, we are delighted to announce that Fasco Chengula has successfully defended his PhD in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Roehampton-London, United Kingdom. Dr. Fasco’s thesis was titled “Knowing weather, strengthening livelihoods: the role of Indigenous knowledge weather forecasting in fishing communities in coastal Tanzania”. It was based on ethnographic field research on Mafia Island, Tanzania, with fishers and those involved in the fish-based economy, as well as anthropology of weather and climate, meteorology, knowledge systems, and the ethnography of Mafia Island. Dr. Fasco’s thesis addresses questions concerning the Local and Indigenous Knowledge System (LIKS) for weather forecasting, the use of weather forecasts in fishing and other livelihood activities, the reception of institutional weather forecasts, and the potentials of integrating LIKS and scientific forecasting to improve weather forecasting and in doing so improve livelihoods. Theoretically, his thesis reaffirms the importance of local knowledge, and its centrality in nature-dependent livelihoods, reaffirms findings in reception studies about the scalar mismatch between institutional weather forecasts and local needs and adds a new dimension to the ethnography of Mafia Island.
As an academic, researcher and consultant with a background on Geography and Environmental studies (BA), Climate change & sustainable development (Msc) and anthropology (PhD), Dr. Fasco brings an interdisciplinary expertise on social and environmental anthropology and related theories and analytical frameworks to the analysis of complex relationships between weather/climate and society and sustainability of socio-economic development. As a social and environmental scientist, he is interested in the way that communities live within climate variability, particularly how social vulnerability to climate-related and environmental hazards is created by economic, political, socio-cultural institutions and development processes.
You can reach him through:
Email: chengulafasco@gmail.com or chengula.fasco@udsm.ac.tz
Office: IRA Building, 1st Floor, Office No: 219
Mwl. Julius Nyerere Campus_University of Dar es salaam