Skills/Experience

Leon Gerber LLB(UP) LLM(UP) LLM(Dundee), a qualified Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, joined the CEPMLP in January 2011 as the Rio Tinto Research Fellow working with the Centre's International Mining Programme team.

Having worked in the private legal industry since 2003, principally in the fields of national and international environmental law; mine and occupational health & safety; corporate litigation; and law of contracts, he has consulted and collaborated on various public and private sector HSE matters related to the mining industry. Formerly an Academic Associate at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, he has also taught and presented on environmental law and international humanitarian law, and worked in collaboration with the university's Centre for Human Rights. Further projects include collaboration on the environmental legal liability regime for the South African National Antarctic Programme; acting as assessor and lecturer for the South African Environmental Management Inspectorate Programme; HSE legal auditing; and conducting comparative environmental law studies for various sub-Saharan Africa countries.

In 2009 he was awarded the Rio Tinto/FCO/Chevening Scholarship for the study of an LLM in Mineral Law and Policy at the CEPMLP. In addition he holds an LLM in Constitutional and Administrative Law focussed on Environmental Law (Pretoria), and Advanced Certificates in mining agreements; alternative dispute resolution; and environmental law.

His areas of research interest include occupational mine health and safety; small-scale and artisanal mining; resources security; extractive industry management; and mineral law and policy.

Role in the Project

Collaboration on the University of Dundee contributions to the POLINARES project.