PARTNERS

Zarina Patel is an Associate Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. She currently holds a Visiting Fellowship with the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research addresses the politics and practices of achieving just and sustainable urban transitions. The distinctive focus of her scholarship is the use of transdisciplinary approaches to navigate alternate insights and responses to complex urban issues in southern contexts. She is the Principal Investigator of the project The New African Urban University, funded by the Worldwide University Network Research Development Fund; and is co-leading a study on Learning from Transdisciplinary Approaches for Sustainable Urban Development in Africa on behalf of the International Science Council. Zarina is editor-in-chief of Urban Forum and serves on the editorial boards of Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, and Urban Sustainability. International collaborations and research leadership have been developed through the Mistra Urban Futures Programme (2012 - 2019) a knowledge co-production programme with partners from the Global North and South; the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Cities and Urbanisation (2019); and Pan-African collaborations focussing on transdisciplinary urban research through the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030, known as LIRA 2030 (current since 2017).

Email address: zarina.patel@uct.ac.za

Warren Smit has been a researcher on urban issues since 1993. Since January 2016 he has been the Research Manager for the African Centre for Cities (ACC), responsible for overseeing ACC’s research activities. He also co-ordinates the Healthy Cities CityLab and has been involved in the Mistra Urban Futures network since its inception in February 2010.

His main areas of research are urbanization/urbanism in Africa, urban policies and planning, housing/informal settlements, and urban health (particularly the relationship between the built environment and health). Although he currently works on a wide range of topics, they all relate to two central themes: urban governance and urban policy discourses. Urban governance is essentially about how decisions are made regarding the shaping and management of cities/towns, and who makes these decisions. The concept of urban policy discourses is about how ideas relating to understanding or shaping cities/towns emerge, compete, and are adopted and adapted, and are used to construct problems and solutions, and then turned into policies and practices. An important strand of this work is how to create new policy-relevant knowledge around understanding and achieving more equitable and sustainable cities, for example, through bringing different stakeholders together to co-produce knowledge.

Email address: warren.smit@uct.ac.za

Dr Andrew Tucker is the Acting Director of the African Centre for Cities. He has extensive experience working to understand and address inequality in a variety of forms across Africa. His work has explored how social markers such as race, sexuality and gender relate to the urban environment. This work has also examined how such relationships must be taken into account in health programmes, with a particular focus on HIV prevention, treatment and care. Tucker has published widely in geographical and health journals. His current research interests include exploring the interface between health and human rights in Africa and considering the genealogy of urban identity-based political movements on the continent.

Email address: andrew.tucker@uct.ac.za

Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is an anthropologist holding a professorship at the Department of social anthropology, University of Bergen and is the Executive Director of the Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP). He has published widely on urban and structural forms of inequality, dynamics of violence in (post-) war settings and multiple forms of political protest. Mozambique, Ghana and southern Africa are areas in which he has not only had the privilege of undertaking fieldwork in but has also places in which he collaborates actively with colleagues and institutions.

Email address: bjorn.bertelsen@uib.no

James Duminy is a lecturer at the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol and an Honorary Research Associate at the African Centre for Cities (ACC). His research examines the historical and contemporary interface between scientific knowledge, urban policymaking and urban governance in Cape Town and South Africa. James has a background in science, urban planning and urban history, and is interested in the historical emergence of contemporary problems, ideas and practices of governance. He joined the ACC as a researcher in 2010. His past work at the ACC focused on enhancing urban planning education and urban research in sub-Saharan Africa through the Association of African Planning Schools, of which he is General Secretary, and the African Urban Research Initiative, which he helped to establish.

James is also interested in emerging approaches to theorising and researching African and Southern cities and urbanisation, and the ethics of planning thought and praxis in the urban South. Some of his previous research has examined the post-apartheid dynamics of South African cities in terms of spatial growth trends, place-naming practices, and the application of the ‘right to the city’ discourse.

Email address: jamesduminy@gmail.com

Susan Parnell is a Global Challenges Research Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Bristol and Emeritus Professor at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. She has held previous academic positions at Wits University and the University of London (SOAS). She was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UCL in 2011/2, Emeka Anyaoku Visiting Chair University College London in 2014/15 and Visiting Professor at LSE Cities in 2017/18. She has been actively involved in local, national and global urban policy debates around the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and is an advocate for better science policy engagement on cities. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications that document how cities, past and present, respond to policy change. Her most recent books include the co-authored Supporting City Futures: The Cities Support Programme and the Urban Challenge in South Africa (ACC, 2020), Building a Capable State: Post Apartheid Service Delivery (Zed, 2017) and the co-edited The Urban Planet (Cambridge, 2018). Sue is currently on the Board of the International Institute for environment and Development (IIED) and the ACC and had previously served on several NGO structures

Email address: susan.parnell@bristol.ac.uk

Isabella Aboderin is a Professor of Gerontology and the Perivoli Chair in Africa Research and Partnerships at the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. Prior to this, Isabella held a dual appointment as Senior Research Scientist and Head of the Aging and Development Unit at the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), Nairobi, and as Associate Professor of Gerontology at the University of Southampton.

Isabella holds a PhD from the School for Policy Studies from the University of Bristol, UK, an MSc in Health Promotion Sciences from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a BSc in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from the University of Bristol. Her research interests center on the nexus between issues of aging and older persons and core development agendas in Africa, with a focus on age-based inequities in wellbeing and service access, older persons’ economic and intergenerational roles and the life course of younger cohorts. Her research is driven by a conviction that issues of aging not only affect individuals and families in sub-Saharan Africa, but they are crucial for the future of the continent.

Email address: isabella.aboderin@bristol.ac.uk

Austin Ablo is aa Development Geographer and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana. His research focuses on urban studies, natural resource governance and energy. Dr Ablo has worked on several research projects. Some of his current projects are Urban water futures: Bridging supply-demand gaps in Accra and Johannesburg through reuse funded by the International Science Council; Patterns of global futures in three African cities funded by the Research Council of Norway; Small Fish and Food Security (SmallFishFood): Towards better utilisation of fish resources for nutrition and food security in Africa funded by the EU Leap-Agri.

Email address: aablo@ug.edu.gh

Eunice Abbey is a Lecturer at the Department of Social Work, University of Ghana. Eunice completed her Ph.D. at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, MPhil at University of Bergen, Norway and Undergraduate studies at the University of Ghana. Her research interests lie in the areas of gender issues, health and well-being of vulnerable population groups, developmental studies and rural health. Eunice is committed to contributing to the knowledge that addresses the barriers to social justice and health equity for the disadvantaged and poor in rural Ghana and exploring how the application of this knowledge could promote positive health behaviours and empower people.

Email address: eabbey@ug.edu.gh

Isaac Arthur is a senior lecturer of human geography at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, Legon. He holds a doctorate degree in Planning and Development from Aalborg University, Denmark. Dr Arthur is an interdisciplinary researcher and has conducted research in the areas of planning and development, the experience economy, migration, innovation and entrepreneurship in food-related rural enterprises. He has published in several peer reviewed journals, contributed to book chapters and reviewed manuscripts for numerous reputable international journals. Dr Arthur is a member of the Regional Studies Association, UK. He is currently involved in the Pan-African College of Sustainable Cities project funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation, and the Mobility and Sociality in Africa’s Emerging Urban project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA).

Email address: ikarthur@ug.edu.gh

Rabiu Asante is a lecturer in both Urban Sociology and Quantitative Research Methods in the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana, Legon. He is a research fellow with the MH-RITES (Mental Health Research Innovation Treatment Engagement Service) Research Center at the University of Houston. He has considerable experience in quantitative and qualitative analysis having worked with UNICEF, WHO, North-West University (South Africa), and the University of South Florida (USA) using data science tools such as SPSS, R, STATA, Excel and Tableau on different projects. With regards to teaching, he spends a large portion of his time teaching data science at both the graduate and postgraduate levels. Dr Asante has published several papers based on his work on digital technologies. In the past five years, Dr Asante’s research has been in digital technologies and their influence on social behaviours, interaction, and development in developing countries. His recent paper on “Addiction / Attachment to mobile devices” lays the foundation for understanding the role of ICT in the new phase of sports gambling in Africa. Currently, he is exploring the mental health needs of problematic sports gambling in Ghanaian Urban Spaces.

Email address: rkbasante@ug.edu.gh

Aba Crentsil is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economics Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana. Her research focuses on the interactions between populations and their environments, energy policy and planning, urban planning and how to accommodate research in above fields by using planning supporting systems and other computer-aided planning tools. Aba also have over 8 years’ experience in conducting both quantitative and qualitative research. She holds a PhD in Development studies from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Aba is also a fellow of the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) at the University of Ghana.

Email address: aocrentsil@ug.edu.gh

Gerald Yiran is an expert in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and climate change adaptation. Dr Yiran is a geodetic engineer and a geographer and has over 10 years of professional experience. He has an excellent knowledge of Remote Sensing and GIS applications and Climate change vulnerability/adaptation analysis. He did assess land degradation in the Bawku East District of Ghana in 2007/2008 using a combination of Remote Sensing and community-based approaches. He was a member of the team that drafted National Climate Change Policy Strategy focus area on migration; He participated in the investigating the impacts of urbanization and climate change on agriculture in Tamale and performed the Spatial analysis of land use change and other GIS related works for the project; He similarly participated in CECAR-Africa Project (a Climate and Ecosystems change assessment project) where he was in charge of the analysis of land use changes and performed other GIS operations; His current research works are on urban studies and in this regard, he has researched on urban sprawl and its effects including its effects on changing livelihoods and domestic energy; conducted a comparative analysis of urban expansion between two Ghanaian cities, contributed to a research on profiling the city of Tamale. He has since 2009 been teaching and supervising students in the use of Remote Sensing and GIS applications.

Email address: gyiran@ug.edu.gh

Shuaib Lwasa is a Principal Researcher on Governance at the Global Center on Adaptation. Shuaib has over 22 years of university teaching and research as Professor of Urban Sustainability at Makerere University. He has worked extensively on interdisciplinary research projects focused on African cities but also in South Asia. His publications are in the areas of urban mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, urban environmental management, spatial planning, and disaster risk reduction, urban sustainability. Shuaib is a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC WG III Chapter 8 “Urban Systems and Human Settlements” and Lead Author for the IPCC Special report on Land and Climate Change.

Email address: shuaiblwasa@gmail.com

Buyana Kareem is an interdisciplinary researcher, committed to advancing global and urban sustainability through teaching university courses, engaging in transdisciplinary research collaborations and advisory support to UN agencies. He works with the Urban Action Lab of Makerere University in Uganda, under the Department of Geography, Geo-informatics and Climatic Sciences. Kareem earned his PhD in sociology for urban and regional development from Stanford University, California USA. He has researched and written about topics that matter to the debate and practice of sustainable urban transformations within Africa that appeal to the globe, including: gender equality, energy transitions, climate resilience pathways and the co-production of knowledge. Kareem has utilized research grants obtained from the International Science Council, the AXA Research Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund UK, to work with scholars, and engage local communities and policy-makers about home-grown pathways to sustainable cities, including at the July-2019 United Nations High-level Political Forum on implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, held in New York. He has worked with different UN agencies as an international consultant in The Gambia, Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, and Liberia.

Email address: kbuyana@gmail.com

Paul Mukwaya is a geographer with an interdisciplinary background, expertise and research interests at the interface of geography and society, urban and regional sciences, transport policy and planning, human-environmental interactions, and local economic development. His research and publications to date have focused on four core areas. First, work is grounded in quantitative social sciences and addresses the institutional evolution and effectiveness of laws, regulations, and policies for the governance of environmental and landscape challenges. Secondly, the transition to sustainable transportation, the political economy of transportation with emphasis in planning and policy to manage travel demand in cities. Thirdly, the processes of urbanization and contemporary problems of urban management across the East African region. Fourthly, work on cities and sustainability lies at the intersection of and implications of environmental change, energy policy and responses to changing urban systems. In addition to academic work, he also continues to undertake consultancy assignments and author reports for a range of clients, including UNDP, UNCDF, UN-Habitat, World Resources Institute (WRI), Cities Alliance, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Council for Development of Social Sciences Research in Africa (CODESRIA), University of Manchester, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Kampala Capital City Authority, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF-Uganda), and the Population Secretariat (Uganda). He has significantly contributed across several projects through research design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript development, and manages project staff including doctoral, master’s, and undergraduate students. He also prioritizes his responsibilities for academic service, contributing as a peer-reviewer or referee for a number of international peer reviewed journals, including: South African Journal of Remote Sensing, ARCC Journals, and CODESRIA. Additionally, he also regularly provides similar services for scholarly book publishers, multilateral organizations, and research institutes, including CODESRIA and Mkuki na Nyota Book Series.

Email address: pmukwaya@gmail.com

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Knowledge and Governance and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the theory and practice of co-production and what this means for urban governance and the production and application of social scientific research. She is currently co-leading a British Academy Sustainable Development Programme project on cultural heritage and sustainable livelihoods in Cape Town and Kisumu and local work in Sheffield to explore the roles of schools in urban regeneration. Her latest books include Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production: A Guide for Sustainable Cities (with Kerstin Hemstrom, Henrietta Palmer, Merrit Polk and David Simon, Practical Action, 2021), Cities and the Knowledge Economy: Promise, Politics and Possibilities (with Tim May, Taylor and Francis, 2018) and Reflexivity: the Essential Guide (with Tim May, Sage, 2017). Between 2012-2020 she was UK Platform Director for Mistra Urban Futures, with partners in the Global North and South and led two nationally funded ESRC projects Jam and Justice: Coproducing Urban Governance for Social Innovation and Whose Knowledge Matters.

Email address: b.perry@sheffield.ac.uk

Vanesa Castan Broto is Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute in the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on climate change governance, urban transformations and everyday innovations for sustainability. She is the Principal Investigator of the project Low Carbon Action in Ordinary Cities (LOACT) funded by the European Research Council and Community Energy and Sustainable Energy Transitions in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique (CESET) funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund. Her latest books include Urban Sustainability and Justice (with Linda Westman, ZED Books, 2019), Urban Energy Landscapes (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Climate Urbanism (co-edited with Aidan While and Enora Robin, Palgrave, 2020). Vanesa serves as a Lead Chapter Author for the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and she wrote the environmental chapter in UN-Habitat's 2020 World Cities Report on the Value of Sustainable Urbanisation.

Email address: v.casanbroto@sheffield.ac.uk

Paula Meth is a Reader in Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. Her work focuses on social and everyday lives within cities of the global South, including South Africa, India and Ethiopia. She has a particular interest in urban change, how it is produced at multiple scales, and how it intersects with the lives of residents in cities to produce inequalities, marginalisation but also opportunities for transformation. She is the Principal Investigator of the research project Youth and the work/housing nexus in Ethiopia and South Africa, funded by the British Academy under their Youth Futures scheme. She is co-author of Geographies of Developing Areas, published by Routledge, London, Second Edition (2014). Between 2016 and 2019 she was the Principal Investigator of the ESRC funded project Living the urban periphery: investment, infrastructure and economic change in African city-regions, part of the Urban Transformation research programme.

Email address: p.j.meth@sheffield.ac.uk

AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist with an abiding interest in the spatial and social compositions of urban regions. He is a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, visiting professor of sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, honorary professor at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, research associate with the Rujak Center for Urban Studies in Jakarta, and research fellow at the University of Tarumanagara. He is currently a Senior Professorial Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. For three decades, AbdouMaliq has worked with practices of social interchange, technical arrangements, local economy, and the constitution of power relations that affect how heterogeneous cities are lived. He has worked on remaking municipal systems, training local government personnel, designing collaborative partnerships among technicians, residents, artists, and politicians.

The focus of these efforts has to been to build viable institutions capable of engaging with the complexities of life across the so-called “majority world.” His work deals with a multiplicity of propositions and capacities for relationships that remain untapped in popular districts across urban Asia and Africa, even though they are deployed everyday under the rubric of “popular economies.”

Email address: a.t.simone@sheffield.ac.uk

Daniel is a Professor of Planning at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, and Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His professional and research interests include urban environmental governance, sustainability, natural resources (land) management and spatial planning. Daniel is a Fellow of the Ghana Institute of Planners (FGIP) and teaches on the International Gestalt Organization and Leadership (iGOLD) Professional Programme based in the United States of America. He obtained a doctoral degree in Spatial Planning from the University of Dortmund, Germany.

Email address: dinkoom@gmail.com

Dr. Elvin Nyukuri is a researcher in Environmental governance, Climate resilience and Natural Resource Conflicts. She is also a Lecturer in Environmental Diplomacy at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law and Policy (CASELAP)-University of Nairobi. She actively engaged in multi-disciplinary research including environmental governance and policy, climate change, urban resilience and food security while working at African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) for nearly a decade.

She served as a programme committee member of the Leading Integrated Research Agenda for Africa, 2030 till the year 2020. She has also served as a reviewer of the Climate Impacts Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement programme (CIRCLE) by DFID. She has consulted for International Organizations including IIED, ODI, Practical Action, IUCN, World Agro-forestry Centre, Pegasis and International Universities- IDS Sussex, University of Reading, LSE, and University of Life Sciences- Norway. She continues to inform policy through research and teaching. Elvin holds a PhD in Development Policy and Practice from The Open University (UK) and a Master’s Degree in International Studies and Diplomacy- University of Nairobi.

Email address: elvin@uonbi.ac.ke

Richard Vokes is an Associate Professor in Anthropology and International Development at the University of Western Australia, and an elected Research Associate of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. Hons. and an M.A. with Distinction in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent, and a D.Phil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford.

His research focuses primarily on the African Great Lakes region, especially on the societies of South-western Uganda, where he has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork since 2000. He has published extensively, including on: development (governance, education, and natural resource management), the HIV/AIDS epidemic, new religious movements, and the history of photography, media and social change. He also works with African-Australians, in the digital humanities, and on the Anthropology of Antarctica.

Email address: richard.vokes@uwa.edu.au

Linda completed her Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Pretoria. Both her Masters and Bachelor of Science degrees in town planning were completed at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she also lectured for a number of years. In 2000 Linda moved to the UK and took up the position Manager of Strategy and Policy at the Royal Town Planning Institute in London and later became the Institute’s web editor. From 2004 She ran her own planning consultancy in Johannesburg focusing on urban policy, low cost and informal housing and research and was an external senior lecturer at both the University of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand. Presently she is Head of postgraduate Teaching and Learning in the Department of Geography and Planning at UWA, where she previously held a position of Research Fellow in the Planning and Transport Research Centre. Linda lectures in a range of planning related fields: Design, Sustainable Urbanisation, Economic Geography, Research Methodology, Marine and Spatial Planning, Disaster management and Social planning.

Her main research focus is on the legacy of colonial planning and the challenges this poses for sustainable and equitable development.

Email address: linda.robson@uwa.edu.au

Alma Viviers is the Communications Manager at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. She has a background in journalism and media and holds a BSc in Architecture from the University of Pretoria.

Email address: Alma.Viviers@uct.ac.za

Dr Anna Taylor is a post-doctoral researcher in the Environmental and Geographical Science Department at the University of Cape Town, specialising in urban climate adaptation, with a particular interest in transformative ways of governing water-related risks and vulnerabilities associated with climate change and urbanisation. With colleagues in the Climate System Analysis Group and the African Centre for Cities, Anna conducts inter- and trans-disciplinary research on climate resilient, sustainable urbanism, public decision making and multi-level governance. She works at co-producing knowledge to address climate risks and vulnerabilities in African cities, especially through case study research, process analysis, organisational ethnography and embedded research approaches. She has spent many years acting as an intermediary between climate scientists and those faced with integrating climate concerns and climate information into the decisions and actions they are taking in various contexts. More recently (2011 onwards) her PhD and post-doctoral work has focused on climate adaptation in urban contexts, notably in Cape Town, Windhoek, Durban, Harare and Lusaka through the Mistra Urban Futures, CLIMWAYS, FRACTAL, LIRA 2030 and GreenGov programmes. She completed her PhD entitled ‘Urban climate adaptation as a process of organisational decision making’ in 2017, investigating three cases of urban climate adaptation in the City of Cape Town.

Email address: anna.taylor@uct.ac.za

Katsia manages the research funding programme Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030 in Africa (LIRA 2030 Africa), which aims to increase the scientific contribution from Africa to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. Katsia also coordinates scientific inputs from the ISC community into policy processes on climate change. Within the Council, Katsia also worked on increasing the involvement of scientists from developing countries in setting up Future Earth, the research agenda for global sustainability, and on fostering interlinkages between global and regional activities on disaster risk reduction. Before joining the Council, she worked for UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics in Paris on building institutional capacities on emergency preparedness and chemical accident prevention, both at national and local levels. Prior to that, Katsia worked at Lund University in Sweden on the development and the implementation of the capacity-building programme “Energy for Sustainable Development”, designed for energy professionals in developing countries. Katsia holds Masters Degrees in environmental engineering, management and policy from Lund University and the Belarusian National Technical University.

Email address: katsia.paulavets@council.science

Professor Heila Lotz-Sisitka works in the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University in the Faculty of Education, where she holds a South African National Research Foundation Chair in Transformative Social Learning and Green Skills Learning Pathways. The Chair’s work focusses on ways in which transformative learning and green skills learning pathways can strengthen people’s participation in securing more socially just and sustainable forms life and living. It foregrounds collective agency for transformative change in society. Professor Lotz-Sisitka has a background in critical research methodologies and a long-standing commitment to furthering and extending participation in education. Her current research interests focus on the relationship between environmental learning, agency and social-ecological and social system transformation.

Email address: h.lotz-sisitka@ru.ac.za