Southern Urbanisms and Urban Humanities

Perspectives of and from southern urbanisms are gaining traction the world over. The humanities are also taking on a distinctly urban flavour. Within this global context, The African Centre for Cities was awarded a Mellon Foundation grant to develop an M.Phil in Southern Urbanisms and reconfigure the M.Phil in Urban Infrastructure and Development Management.

The two courses have been developed over the course of 2017 and will be implemented in 2018. CTLIP Mistra Urban Futures research has been drawn into the teaching and will draw on Mistra Urban Futures training materials from the curricula. Edgar Pieterse, Sophie Oldfield and Antonio Tomas will be the key personnel in the teaching programme, but Mistra Urban Futures researchers will be supervising students.

Related to this is an ongoing focus on Urban Humanities. Rike Sitas and Shari Daya (from Environmental and Geographical Sciences) will continue to explore how to deepen the urban humanities in 2018, primarily through an elective module for postgraduate students intitled Southern Urbanisms through Film and Fiction. Another activity will be to put together a seminar series on urban humanities in consultation with Antonio Tomas and Sophie Oldfield.