Category Archives: Postdoc

Design by the people

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In May of 2012 the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) launched the forum ‘Ukuyila Ngabantu/ Design by the people/ Ontwerp deur die Mense’ in Khayelitsha. In November 2012, in my position as postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Cities (ACC), I helped the SJC produce the 5th Annual Irene Grootboom Memorial Series with ‘Design by the People’ as the theme. The series looked provided a forum for leading activists, designers, community leaders, academics and experts to critically engage the concept of design, looking at whether design can be used as an instrument for advancing social justice and reducing urban inequality (especially in regard to Cape Town as World Design Capital 2014). See the schedule for the series on the SJC site, and in short form on the poster below (designed by Michael MacGarry).

Grootboom 2012

Grootboom 2012

Postdoc

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I have been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town, first with the Public Culture CityLab at the African Centre for Cities (2012 – 2014) and subsequently on the international research project Global Arenas of Knowledge (2014 – 2017) which investigates ‘Southern Theory‘ (you can see a review of a related book ‘Africa-centred Knowledges‘ co-authored by my research leader Robert Morrell here). I interviewed climate change researchers in the Energy Research Centre at UCT, and co-authored a paper from our research ‘Southern Agency: Navigating Local and Global Imperatives in Climate Research‘ published by MIT Press’ Global Environmental Politics in August 2018.

Most of the posts in this category of my website are from my postdoctoral fellowship with the African Centre for Cities (ACC), which ‘seeks to facilitate critical urban research and policy discourses for the promotion of vibrant, democratic and sustainable urban development in the global South from an African perspective’. I worked on issues around public art, design and culture, especially in the context of Cape Town as World Design Capital 2014. My position was the ‘Max-Planck/ACC Super-diversity Postdoctoral Research Fellowship’, funded by the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gottingen, Germany.

Below are posts from my Journal related to my postdoc work.