Clara Marais

Clara Marais is a climate resilience practitioner from South Africa pursuing an MSc in Nature, Society, and Environmental Governance at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. She is an Oppenheimer Fund Scholar and a member of Linacre College.

Her work sits at the intersection of environmental justice, gender-responsive disaster risk reduction, and inclusive urban development in African cities, driven by a conviction that technical fixes to climate change and development challenges fall short when they overlook the structural forces that shape who bears the greatest risk. At Oxford, she hopes to deepen her understanding of the politics of environmental knowledge and governance, working toward climate-resilient development pathways that centre questions of plurality, power, and historical context.

Clara graduated cum laude with a BA Honours in Environmental and Geographical Science from the University of Cape Town, building on an undergraduate background in English Language and Literature, a combination that continues to shape how she reads landscapes and stories of change.

She believes that collaborative inquiry and systems-based approaches are essential to building more democratic, just futures amid a changing climate, and hopes to work with multilateral organisations to strengthen the links between transdisciplinary research, policy, and on-the-ground impact.

Outside of her academic work, Clara enjoys hiking trails, afternoons spent experimenting in the kitchen, and backgammon, a game she takes more seriously than she’ll admit.