This webinar is the second in a series of urban discussions organised by Southern Urbanism Research Group Ensemble (SURGE). This series brings together Southern scholars, practitioners and activists from the global South.
Following up from webinar 1, ‘Situating the urban climate crisis from and for the global South’, this webinar seeks to present an alternative understanding of the ‘legacy of coloniality’ in Southern urban contexts. This alternative understanding is explored by highlighting Southern narratives, interpretations and explorations of pre- to post-colonial urban continuities and discontinuities. We address this theme and its implication for cities through topics on: knowledge creation/ generation and histories differential/ asymmetrical timelines, multiple temporalities in the built environment and its governance; and representations and methods in exploring these urban contexts.
The webinar will be in conversation with two distinguished presenters :
Hlengiwe Ndlovu is a Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Governance (WSG), University of the Witwatersrand. Before joining WSG, Hlengiwe was a senior lecturer at the University of Free State where she lectured in the Department of Sociology. Previously, Hlengiwe completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University. She then joined the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg – initially as a postdoctoral fellow, then as a research associate where she is one of the principal investigators working on a collaborative research project on ‘democracy from below.’ Hlengiwe’s current work grapples with state/society relations, questions of gender representation in the local state and the everyday reproduction of the urban space as a form of democratic citizenship. Her research and publications are concerned with three areas: gender equality, democracy from below, local governance and social movements, collective actions and change. Among other publications, Hlengiwe has written on the role of women in the #FeesMustFall movement, histories of participation of women in community protests and the precarity of women during the covid 19 pandemic. She is also the co-editor of Rioting and Writing: Diaries of the Wits #Fallists, (2017) – a edited book documenting the experiences of student activists during the #FeesMustFall protests.
Pfunzo Sidogi
Pfunzo Sidogi has a decade-long career in art education and is currently the head of the Departmentof Fine and Studio Arts, Faculty of Arts and Design at the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. His research focuses on South African art history, arts education and comics. His newest books are Mihloti Ya Ntsako: Journeys with the Bongi Dhlomo Collection (Pretoria: Javett Art Centre, University of Pretoria, 2022) and The De-Africanization of African Art: Towards Post-African Aesthetics (New York: Routledge, 2021), which he co-edited with Denis Ekpo.
Registration link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlgJD8SbHVQCw_WIm2CfAt4mOeec3KXuRFZxFycF1PjjQ3Nw/viewform
(Image courtesy of Ohoud Kamal/ Panopticon model @ UCL campus)