Edgar Pieterse

Prof Edgar Pieterse is an urban scholar, writer, curator and creative agent whose interests include the theory and practice of policy discourses and interventions to make African cities more just, open and accessible. He holds the South African Research Chair in Urban Policy at the University of Cape Town and is Director of the African Centre for Cities. Formerly a special policy advisor to the premier of the Western Cape, he is the co-author of New Urban Worlds: Inhibiting Dissonant Times (2017), and co-editor of Africa’s Urban Revolution (2014) and Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities (2013). He is a member of the Research Advisory Committees of the Gauteng City-region Observatory and LSE Cities. He was the co-lead author of the Urban Chapter for the International Panel on Social Progress. Prof Pieterse is a Visiting Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He is also attached to the University of Cambridge, Programme for Sustainability Leadership, which provides leadership development programmes, dialogues and other learning services for senior individuals and major organisations around the world so that they can respond creatively to global challenges. As the founder member of Isandla Institute, Professor Edgar served as a board member until 2016 and also on the board of Open Society Foundation of South Africa.