She also conducts empirical and conceptual research on the dynamic linkages between sustainability and equity, especially in the context of more complex, connected and uncertain futures.
Prof Reyers received her PhD from the University of Pretoria, South Africa in 2001. She then worked at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch, South Africa until 2004. Subsequently, she established and led the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Research Group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where she worked as a Chief Scientist until 2015. From 2015 – 2018, Prof Reyers was the Director of the GRAID Resilience and Development program at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden. She returned to South Africa in 2018 to take up her current position at Future Africa.
Reyers has played a number of advisory roles to national government and international bodies including: Vice Chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth; Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; Science Committee: DIVERSITAS; Advisory Committee: Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems; and the Bridge Collaborative. Reyers initiated and co-led the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society, a network of leading social-ecological researchers working in southern Africa to develop new theory and tools and grow capacity in the social-ecological systems field, and one of the core case studies within the Future Earth Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). She has served as an Editor and Associate Editor for several interdisciplinary journals.