Daniëlle Cronjé is the Communications and Projects Officer for the Research Chair in the Sociology of Land, Environment, and Sustainable Development. Her research interests include multispecies ethnography, miracle plants, environmentalism, and labour in ecological restoration. Drawing on her experience in marketing, she is passionate about the potential role corporate organisations can play in contemporary conservation initiatives.

Daniëlle recently submitted her MA thesis, completed through the Research Chair, titled “The Spekboom Restoration Movement: An Ethnographic Study of ‘Miracle Plants’, Labour, Value-Making, and Contestation in South Africa.” The thesis examines the growth and adaptation of large-scale spekboom (Portulacaria afra) plantings in South Africa, emphasising the formation of actors and the more-than-human assemblages in which these projects unfold. It explores the hype surrounding the spekboom as a miracle plant alongside the on-the-ground realities through which this narrative takes shape. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of “following the mushroom,” the study “follows” the spekboom across different worlds, including lived accounts from various stakeholders, policy documents, and media discourse.