Anél du Plessis is Professor of Law and Acting Director: Research at the North-West University (NWU).  Her scholarship focuses on the nexus area of environmental-, local government and different aspects of human rights law and city governance. She is editor of the first and still only extensive volume on South African environmental and local government law. She has published widely and supervised more than 40 post-graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in these areas. She coordinates the NWU's LLM Programme in Environmental Law and Governance since 2015. She is currently co-heading an Alexander von Humboldt research project with the Freie Universität, Berlin with the focus on “Safe and Sustainable Cities”. The project team submitted an edited volume on the globalisation of urban governance to Routledge in June 2018. From November 2018 Prof Du Plessis will direct the newly designated NRF SARChI Chair at the NWU focusing on Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability (CLES). She is a rated researcher of the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), served as an elected member of the South African Young Academy of Science and is an alumnus of the scholarship programmes of the DAAD, Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is member of the Executive Committee of the Environmental Law Association of South Africa for the past twelve years and serves on the Teaching Committee of the international IUCN Academy of Environmental Law.