“Armed lifeboat” politics, delivery services that know our “most intimate wants”, cars that are “spying” on us … are some of the things that get her down, legal scholar Prof Tracy-Lynn Field said at the Faculty of Law last month.

But she is holding on to hope in an “age of fear” shaped by climate breakdown, war, AI disruption and deepening inequality thanks to art, law and ethics, she explained in a strikingly personal and unusually interdisciplinary address.

Field serves as Director of the Mandela Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and holds the Claude Leon Chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship. She was appointed to South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission at the start of the year.

She was the keynote speaker on 14 May 2026 at the third annual public lecture hosted by the Faculty of Law’s Chair in Urban Law and Sustainability Governance, Prof Anél du Plessis, who said of her: 

Prof Field is a highly respected and acclaimed academic in the fields of environmental, climate and constitutional law, and one of the few legal scholars in South Africa who has mastered the ability to engage with and disentangle complex theory, conceptual narratives and academic discourse in ways that connect to real-life, tangible impact – specifically through activism, law and policy reform, and judicial interpretation.

Click here to read the article by freelance journalist Desmond Thompson as published in Business Day on 29 May.