As the University of Cape Town‘s 2025 academic year kicked off mid-February, we welcomed students from near and far who will pursue their MPhil in Urban Studies – Southern Urbanism degree at the African Centre for Cities over the next two years. The 2025 MPhil cohort boasts professionals and recent graduates from the social sciences and humanities, land valuation, commerce and risk management backgrounds. In line with the ethos to foster the next generation of urban scholars rooted in southern city perspectives, the students are from Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, United States and Zimbabwe.
To prepare them for their studies and introduce them to UCT’s way of work, the MPhil convenor Dr. Anna Selmeczi hosted an induction workshop on 13 and 14 February before the start of the teaching programme. This also served as an opportunity to meet some of their lecturers and familiarise themselves with the course content.
In her introduction, Anna emphasised the collaborative nature of the programme and explained that there is a lot of peer-to-peer learning involved. “You learn so much from each other and through working with each other as you come from different cities, different experiences and disciplinary backgrounds. You each have so much to contribute, and we learn from you too and hope to pose the right questions so that you can pursue whatever you are here for,” she said.
Delphine Atwine is a valuation surveyor from Uganda with a passion for land management and real estate. “I’ve seen how dangerous it is for our government not to be prepared for the amount of developments happening,” she said about her experience back home. A planner from Ghana, Emmanuel Bowan is looking forward to exploring and sharing ideas on how to build, develop and solve challenges in cities.
Not entirely new to the programme, Aaliyah Hendricks and Raessa Noor-Mohamed decided to pursue the MPhil after taking the Urban Everyday module in 2024 as part of their respective honours’ qualifications. It was during the semester module when Raessa realised there was a space for their passion and activism in the programme. “The Urban Everyday assignments were open and there were arts-based projects…I didn’t realise there was a space for me here (at ACC). It was only when I was writing my motivation that I realised I have been thinking about cities my whole life,” said Raessa, a climate justice activist who majored in Anthropology and Theatre.
Geetika Anand, who teaches on the City Research Studio (CRS1), gave them an idea of what to expect in the module, where they work with other partners and communities of two occupation sites in Cape Town – Singabalapha and Cissie Gool House. “We are going to sites that are alive and exciting. That is exciting on one hand and can also be scary on the other…The idea of the studio is to work in collaboration and produce something that is useful for the residents we are working for in this moment,” Geetika explained.
Like in the past years, the MPhil Urban Everyday module will be joined by exchange students from the University of Basel’s MA Critical Urbanisms Program, and other UCT students who choose it as an elective.
