Profile

Dr. Zeeda is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Faculty of Science, University of Malaya (UM) and the Director of the Universiti Malaya Sustainability and Development Centre. 

She started my academic career in UM after the completion of my PhD in 2009. She graduated with a BSc. in Ecology from the Institute of Biological Sciences, Universiti Malaya; MSc in Environmental Management and Policy from the International Institute of Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), Lund University, Sweden; and PhD in Science and Technology Policy from SPRU Science and Technology Policy, University of Sussex, United Kingdom.

Her academic interest is primarily to understand the relationship between the development of science, technology and innovation (STI) and environmental protection, particularly within the context of sustainable development and associated challenges to late-industrialising countries. In the past few years, she has applied my interdisciplinary perspective in environmental and STI studies into the emerging field of Sustainability Science. This has broadened my work into the inter- and trans-disciplinary area of sustainability transitions, education for sustainable development, participatory watershed management and more recently, place-based citizen science. She teach and supervise both undergraduate and postgraduate courses/programmes that relates the scientific field of  environmental sciences with policy, management and governance of STI. 

She has also been active in campus sustainability activism since my student years until today. She was the deputy coordinator/principal coordinator for the UM campus sustainability initiative from 2009 – 2013, the founding Director of the university’s Sustainability and Community Centre (UMCARES) and acted as one of the architects of the current set-up of the Sustainability@UM and UM Living Lab programme. She is also the principal investigator for one of UM’s pioneering Campus Sustainability Living Lab – the UM Water Warriors – where she work closely with like-minded colleagues, across generations, who are passionate about participatory watershed conservation. I currently act as UM’s representative for the ASEAN University Network on Ecological Education and Culture (AUN-EEC) and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UMSDN), Malaysian Chapter (since its inception). 

In the past, she also acted as a networking fellow under the Universities and Research Council Network on Innovation for Inclusive Development South East Asia (UNIID-SEA) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Asia Core Programme in Asian-oriented Integrated Watershed Management.