Professor Zarina Patel

Zarina Patel is an Associate Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. She currently holds a Visiting Fellowship with the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research addresses the politics and practices of achieving just and sustainable urban transitions. The distinctive focus of her scholarship is the use of transdisciplinary approaches to navigate alternate insights and responses to complex urban issues in southern contexts, whilst foregrounding the diversity of forms of knowledge that are recognised as authoritative within these debates. Her research is marked by its concern to develop southern theorisations on urban knowledge and transitions, and is framed through a commitment to engaged and socially responsive scholarship.  

Zarina is editor-in-chief of Urban Forum; is a founding editor of Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice;  and serves on the editorial boards of Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, and njp Urban Sustainability. International collaborations and research leadership have been developed through the Mistra Urban Futures Programme (2012 - 2019) a knowledge co-production programme with partners from the Global North and South; the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Cities and Urbanisation (2019); and Pan-African collaborations focussing on transdisciplinary urban research through the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030, known as LIRA 2030 (current since 2017).