Who We Are
Staff
Prof. Fiona Anciano
PUG Research Head; Programme lead: Democracy and Citizenship
Fiona Anciano is a Professor in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape, and a Visiting Researcher at University West, Sweden. She is a qualitative researcher with an interest in urban governance, democratisation, citizenship and civil society. Working with student teams, she conducts research in informal settlements on urban democracy. She has managed 13 grant projects in Cape Town over the last 10 years and has produced numerous local and international publications, including a co-authored book Democracy Disconnected: Participation and Governance in a City of the South, in 2019 and edited the 2021 book Political Values and Narratives of Resistance: Social Justice and the Fractured Promises of Post-colonial States both published in the United Kingdom by Routledge.
Dr Mmeli Dube
Programme lead: Human Rights, PUG Research Management
Mmeli Dube is a researcher who leads PUG’s Human Rights Programme. His research interests include civil society, citizen engagement, informality, sanitation, and human rights. He combines academic insight with practical knowledge gained from over a decade of leadership in civil society, focusing on enhancing public accountability, citizen-state interaction, elections, youth participation, and related areas. Recently, Mmeli has participated in international research projects, leading to collaborative writings on political values, democratic citizenship, and non-sewered sanitation in informal urban contexts.
Dr Christina Culwick Fatti
Programme lead: Urban Governance, PUG Research Management
Christina leads PUG’s Urban Governance research programme. With over ten years of experience in government-facing urban research, she has led various projects related to the intersection between environmental and social systems within cities. She is a geographer by training (Wits and UCT), and her research extends across multiple disciplines, with a specific focus on collaborative knowledge creation and the role of transdisciplinary research for informing policy and practice. Beyond her academic research, Christina holds a postgraduate diploma in teaching (UNISA) and she previously worked as an SABC broadcasting meteorologist.
Boitumelo Papane
Researcher and PhD Student
Boitumelo is a researcher at the University of the Western Cape. Papane holds a Master’s degree in Work-Integrated Political Studies from the University West (HV). She is a scholar of the Mellon Foundation with membership to its affiliated Social Science Research Council. Her research interests include the theories and practice of political participation and informality in community-based organizations. She conducts research that speaks to the current political climate and produce outputs that reflect her mission towards scholarly activism.
She is currently a PhD student in the Governing the Just Urban Transition Project (GoJUT), supervised by Fiona Anciano and SJ Cooper-Knock.
Michaelyn Cornelius
Administrator, Finance Manager, Event Organiser
Michaelyn Cornelius is a research administrator for PUG and a Masters Candidate with a special interest in issues related to gender and sexuality. Michaelyn completed her Honours degree at the University of the Western Cape, looking at the qualitative nature of heteropatriarchy and its invasive presence within women-loving women (wlw) relationships. Cornelius also supports and promotes the fourth and sixteenth SDGs of quality education and peace, justice and strong institutions through her volunteerism.
Babongile Bidla
Researcher, Website and Social Media Manager
Babongile Bidla is Political Studies Masters candidate at the University of the Western Cape. She is an innovative and creative problem solver with a passion for learning and helping others. Bidla has a strong interest in research, democratic accountability, ICT and respect for human rights. She is passionate about using her skills to make a difference in the world and in her academic studies is currently researching ways different types of technologies can improve public service delivery in South Africa.
Nheo Fumba
Research Assistant
Nheo is the Africa Hub’s Research Assistant. She holds an Honours degree in Political & International Studies from Rhodes University and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from UWC. Her dissertation looked at intra-race identity formation in post-democratic South Africa: An investigation of the “coconut”. Nheo has a special interest in research and evaluation, socio-economic development programmes and human rights advocacy. She is passionate about expanding her expertise in human rights, particularly in the African context
Dr Motshwaedi Sepeng
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Motshwaedi Sepeng is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Governing the Just Urban Transition project. He has an academic background from the University of the Witwatersrand. His work explores the intersections of people, infrastructure and the environment, focusing on water and sanitation. Passionate about sustainable development, Motshwaedi investigates how urban transitions can be governed equitably to promote resilience and inclusivity in poor communities, and ensure just and sustainable access to essential resources.
Sindisa Monakali
Research Assistant
Sindisa Monakali is a research assistant for the Politics and Urban Governance Research Group, and he focuses on sanitation in Cape Town informal settlement. He is also an activist scholar who believes in education for liberation, and the national chairperson of Equal Education. Currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree at the University of the Western Cape. Lastly, Sindisa is also a fellow for the Mellon Foundation MDP program and Canon Collins Sol Plaatjie scholarship alumni. His research interests continue to be rooted in land, violence, memory, dispossession, social movements, occupation, and decolonisation.
Advisory Board
Prof. Michelle Esau
Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of the Western Cape
Professor Michelle Esau has been Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at UWC since 2018, following roles as Acting Dean, Deputy Dean, and Professor in the School of Government. A UWC graduate with a PhD, her teaching and research focus on public sector ethics, democracy, and citizenship. She has published widely, contributed opinion pieces on ethical leadership and women in the workplace, and secured research grants from institutions like the Ford Foundation and VLIR. Prof. Esau has held leadership roles in international public management organisations and has been involved in global research collaborations on youth citizenship and societal development.
Assoc. Prof. Zarina Patel
Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town
Zarina Patel is an Associate Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Dean for Research in the Faculty of Science at the University of Cape Town. Her scholarship includes engaged research and teaching practices that seek alternate ways of knowing and responding to complex urban issues in southern contexts. With a background in both the sciences and social sciences, and with a deep curiosity with how cities can transition to become more sustainable and just, her enquiries straddle science and policy, and theory and practice. Her approach to engaging the scalar and temporal dimensions of just urban transitions recognises the need for multiple knowledges and viewpoints and is therefore explicitly collaborative. Zarina contributes to promoting southern scholarship through her positions as Trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation, and her journal editorial board contributions to Local Environment, npj Urban Sustainability, and Urban Forum (where she is a former Editor in Chief); and inaugural editor of Environmental Planning F. She is President of the Society of South African Geographers, and Chair of the South African Committee of the International Geographers Union.
Prof. Paul Gready
UNESCO Chair in Protection of Human Rights Defenders, University of York
Paul Gready currently serves as the UNESCO Chair in Protection of Human Rights Defenders, and Expansion of Political Space. His research interests include human rights practice, transitional justice, human rights and development, culture and human rights, and human rights cities. He has worked for a number of international and national human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and has experience as a human-rights consultant. Professor Gready is the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights. He also teaches Defending Human Rights, Social Sciences and Human Rights Practice and Culture and Protest at the University of York. Professor Gready is an associate member of the PUG Research Working Committee. He has authored many papers and books on human rights practice, transitional justice, human rights and development, culture and human rights, and human rights cities. Paul is a key partner within PUG’s Human Right’s Programme and is a member of PUG’s Advisory Board.
Prof. Charlotte Lemanski
University of Cambridge
Prof. Charlotte Lemanski the Professor of Urban Geography, University of Cambridge. She has authored many papers on various topics related to political and urban governance research. Prof Charlotte Lemanski is an associate member of the PUG Research working committee and a member of PUG’s Advisory Board. She has been instrumental in sharing her deep knowledge in her field relating to several of PUG’s projects.
UWC Research Associates
Dr. Lindokuhle Mandyoli
UWC Research Associate
Dr Lindokuhle Mandyoli is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, University of the Western Cape. He has research interests in the capital/race debate in South Africa, democratic constitutional hegemony and the intellectual history(ies) of the South African student movement. He is a recipient of the Centre for Humanities Research PhD Fellowship in the National Research Foundation’s Flagship for Critical African Humanities and of the Mellon Writing Fellowship at the University of Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Global Change (ICGC). He was involved in of the UNESCO Chair Project titled: Universities as Sites of Protection and Activism. In his PhD research, he investigated the ways in which constitutional democratic hegemony inevitably reproduces different in form, but similar in essence, socio-political, socioeconomic and cultural problems that were produced by colonialism and apartheid. Drawing a comparison between the 1976 Uprisings and the 2015 #FeesMustFall movement in South Africa, he explored how hegemony manifests itself differently in both these moments, while under a consistent logic in two qualitatively different regimes.
Dr. Meshay Moses
UWC Research Associate
Dr Meshay Moses is an associate lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at University of the Western Cape. Some of her research interests include the politics of social protection with a focus on social assistance in the form of social grants (i.e. direct cash transfers). Within this research area, she is particularly interested in the distribution of state resources, constitutional claim-making regarding socio-economic rights in South Africa, and the impact on state-citizen relations. More broadly, Meshay is also interested in participatory democracy, civil society, political parties, and voter perceptions.
Research Associates (External)
Dr Margot Rubin
Lecturer in Spatial Planning, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University
Dr Margot Rubin is an urban geographer and planner who is interested in working across and between spatial and political disciplines. Her work is comparative, largely focused on the Global South, and draws on embedded and well-established research networks that span multiple countries. She explores key questions of urban sustainability through various lenses, such as housing provision and mobility, framed by broader theoretical analyses of governance and gender. Her research projects have ranged in focus from urban housing, land use management, transit-oriented development, to urban governance, questions of mobility and accessibility, and work on gender and the Geographies of Care. This has given her the scope to engage with broad conceptual themes of socio-economic rights, urban sustainability, spatial change and identity politics and their relationship to the City through comparative studies. These have included comparisons between Delhi, India and Johannesburg; Johannesburg and Cairo, Egypt; and she is currently involved in a comparative mobility study with colleagues in Maputo, Mozambique, and study of the housing/employment nexus of the urban youth in Hawassa, Ethiopia and Ekangala, South Africa.
Prof. Paul Gready
UNESCO Chair in Protection of Human Rights Defenders, University of York
Paul Gready currently serves as the UNESCO Chair in Protection of Human Rights Defenders, and Expansion of Political Space. His research interests include human rights practice, transitional justice, human rights and development, culture and human rights, and human rights cities. He has worked for a number of international and national human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and has experience as a human-rights consultant. Professor Gready is the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights. He also teaches Defending Human Rights, Social Sciences and Human Rights Practice and Culture and Protest at the University of York. Professor Gready is an associate member of the PUG Research Working Committee. He has authored many papers and books on human rights practice, transitional justice, human rights and development, culture and human rights, and human rights cities. Paul is a key partner within PUG’s Human Right’s Programme and is a member of PUG’s Advisory Board.
Prof. Charlotte Lemanski
University of Cambridge
Prof. Charlotte Lemanski the Professor of Urban Geography, University of Cambridge. She has authored many papers on various topics related to political and urban governance research. Prof Charlotte Lemanski is an associate member of the PUG Research working committee and a member of PUG’s Advisory Board. She has been instrumental in sharing her deep knowledge in her field relating to several of PUG’s projects.
Dr SJ Cooper-Knock
Senior Lecturer, Dept. for Sociological Studies and School of law, University of Sheffield.
Dr SJ Cooper-Knock is a Senior Lecturer at the Department for Sociological Studies and the School of Law, University of Sheffield, with a focus on the politics of urban justice and development, law and social order in Africa, the politics of crisis, urban belonging, and urbanisation. They have authored numerous papers on political and urban governance, and have played a key role in sharing their expertise in related research projects.
Students
Rogini Naidoo
Masters
- Status: current student
- Research project: Governing the Just Urban Transition
- Supervisors: Fiona Anciano; Christina Culwick Fatti
Rogini is a Masters student at the Political Studies Department focusing on sustainability, governance, and South Africa’s energy crisis. Their area of interest includes exploring how political parties impact a just urban transition in SA. Rogini has experience in conducting fieldwork and data analysis. They are dedicated to making a positive impact through their research and hope to contribute to the global effort towards a more sustainable future.
Miguel Josslyn Isaac
Programme: Masters
- Status: current student
- Research project: Off-grid Cities
- Supervisor: Fiona Anciano
Miguel Isaac is a master's candidate in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Her research project works towards achieving 3 of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals i.e., affordable and clean energy; sustainable cities and communities; and climate action. Isaac’s research focuses on elite infrastructural secession and the implications for social justice. Isaac's core value in life is to inspire, impact, and empower the people in her community.
Zackeen Thomas
Programme: Masters
- Status: current student
- Supervisor: Prof. Laurence Piper
- Research project: Off-grid Cities
Zackeen Thomas is a Master's Student in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). His research interests include urban politics, governance, and democracy. His Master's dissertation explores the secession of households in Cape Town from state-provided water infrastructure to private hybrid networks, such as installing a borehole, and the impacts thereof on sustainable urban water governance.
Martin Tarh
Programme: PhD
- Status: current student
- Research project: Off-grid Cities
- Supervisor: Fiona Anciano
Martin Eyong Tarh is a dedicated University of the Western Cape (UWC) community member for the past five years. Tarh has a Bachelor's Degree in English Private Law from the University of Yaounde and a Honours and Masters in Political Studies at UWC. He has also collaborated with organizations like "Reclaim the City" in Cape Town to contribute to research and project development. Tarh has presented at the esteem 5th Global Change Conference and attended various research technique workshops, resulting in a few publications. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in the Political Science department at UWC.
Kurisani Mdhluli
Programme: PhD
- Status: current student
- Research project: Governing the Just Urban Transition
- Supervisors: Fiona Anciano; Christina Culwick Fatti
Kurisani Mdhluli is a PhD (Political Studies) candidate in the Department of Political Studies under the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Western Cape. He is affiliated with the Politics and Urban Governance Research Group forming part of the team working on Governing the Just Urban Transition project. His research interests include African Urbanism, Urban Governance, and Peace, Security and Sustainable Development. His doctoral research focuses on JUT, service delivery, and Urban Governance in the City of Cape Town. Kurisani has five years of work experience in academia and the think tank industry.
Asemahle Mahlungwana
Programme: Masters
- Status: Current student
- Research project: Governing the Just Urban Transition
- Supervisors: Fiona Anciano; Christina Culwick Fatti
Asemahle is a Masters student in Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape, focusing on contemporary political theory. Her research interests include the dynamics of urban governance, democracy, and social justice. Currently, her Masters research explores local government structures and policy implementation in urban settings. She aims to contribute to the understanding of how urban environments can foster democratic engagement and effective governance through academia.
Boitumelo Papane
Researcher and PhD Student
Boitumelo is a researcher at the University of the Western Cape. Papane holds a Master’s degree in Work-Integrated Political Studies from the University West (HV). She is a scholar of the Mellon Foundation with membership to its affiliated Social Science Research Council. Her research interests include the theories and practice of political participation and informality in community-based organizations. She conducts research that speaks to the current political climate and produce outputs that reflect her mission towards scholarly activism.
She is currently a PhD student in the Governing the Just Urban Transition Project (GoJUT), supervised by Fiona Anciano and SJ Cooper-Knock.