Professor 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 the African city more just, open and vibrant. He holds the South African Research Chair in Urban Policy and is director of the African Centre for Cities, both at the University of Cape Town

Formerly a special policy advisor to the premier of the Western Cape, he is the author of

City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development -2008 and New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times (in press)

He is co-editor of Africa’s Urban Revolution -2014 and Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities -2013

Pieterse is also consulting editor of Cityscapes.

He is a member of the Research Advisory Committees of the Gauteng City-region Observatory, the Indian Institute of Human Settlements and LSE Cities. He is co-lead author of the Urban Chapter for the International Panel on Social Progress.