Crew
Two decades ago, an aspirant South African writer with wide eyes but no track record stepped aboard the SA Agulhas research vessel to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a voyage to Marion Island in the southern Atlantic. She joined a team of climate science post-graduate students who were tracking how rising global temperatures were changing the climate and redrawing life on this precious, remote, supposedly untouched volcanic dot in the ocean half way between South Africa and Antarctica.
Since then, Leonie Joubert has become an internationally recognised science journalist and author. She has more than 10 books to her name, countless pieces of journalism — including in august legacy titles such as National Geographic magazine and Zet Deutsche Zeitung — and racked up a shelf full of awards for her climate reporting.
All of this was made possible because one visionary Stellenbosch University (SU) scientist saw the value of cross-disciplinary collaboration between the Faculty of Science and the Department of Journalism. Prof Steven Chown, then director of the Capacity Building Programme for Climate Change Research, set aside funding to support a science journalism Master’s student to complete a degree while working in the field alongside scientists and researchers.
Institutional partner
Story Ark is the chance for this incredible learning opportunity to come full circle. Leonie Joubert is returning her alma mater through a collaboration with the SU School of Climate Studies. Through this year-long project, she will revisit many of the stories, issues, species, communities, and people that she reported on in her first book Scorched: South Africa’s changing climate and the many other books and pieces of journalism that followed.
Leonie is partnering with the School for Climate Studies in the Faculty of Science at Stellenbosch University for the duration of this year-long storytelling project, where she is a research associate for the duration of the project.
Media partners
Story Ark stories will be published on this website, as well as through partners in the mainstream media, including Mongabay, the Daily Maverick, and Nature Africa.
The Henry Nxumalo Foundation is supporting investigative components of the project.
Sponsorship
Like any good voyage, Story Ark is travelling to remote and often pretty inaccessible parts of the country. Off-grid power supply for these legs of the journey is possible because of a solar-powered Ecoflow portable power supply.
Story Ark is a year-long journalistic storytelling project.
Science journalist and author Leonie Joubert is on the road, visiting remote and often ‘invisible’ locations around southern Africa, documenting the untold stories of the region’s climate crisis.
The name Story Ark draws on the importance of storytelling, and the need for journalism to draw our attention to the notion of a Noah’s ark in ecological, cultural and social conservation.
Story Ark is a collaboration with the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University.