Publications (selection)
- What is Critical Urbanism? Urban Research as Pedagogy 2022
- Urban Studies at the University of Basel 2020
- Step, Step, Breathe 2020
- Building Houses Bit-by-Bit: The stories of Hazeldean-Ekupumleni 2019
- Urban Immersions 2018
- Between activism and the academy: The urban as political terrain 2015
- Waiting for the state: A politics of housing in South Africa 2015
- Straining: Young Men Working through Waithood in Freetown, Sierra Leone 2015
- Handbook on Cities of the Global South 2014
- Claiming 'rights' in the African City: popular Mobilisation and the politics of informality in Nairobi, Rabat, ... 2014
- De facto vs. de jure Home Ownership: Women’s Everyday Negotiations in Lusaka and Cape Town 2013
- Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in the South 2011
- The Contested Politics of Housing Allocation in Ikapa, Cape Town, 1981–1994 2010
- Editorial: Body Politics and the Gendered Crafting of Citizenship 2009
- The Parallel Claims of Gated Communities and Land Invasions in a Southern City: Polarised State Responses 2009
- Who’s Serving Whom? Partners, Process, and Products in Service-Learning Projects in South African Urban Geography 2008
- Building Unity in Diversity: Social Movement Activism in the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign 2006
- Political Polemics, Local Practices of Community-Organizing and Neoliberal Politics in South Africa 2006
- Engagement and reconstruction in critical research: negotiating urban practice, policy and theory in South Africa 2004
Projects (selection)
- The Urban as Political Terrain: Mobilization, Research and the City
- South African Urban Imperatives Past, Present and Future: Theory Building with Knowledge Beyond the University
- Shades of Grey: The Politics of Compounded Waiting in Southern Africa
Courses
- Critical Urbanisms: Theories and Methods Fall 2017
- Housing from Above and Below Fall 2017
- Urban Research Design Fall 2017
- The Urban Everyday Spring 2018
- African Cities Fall 2018
- Critical Urbanisms: Theories and Methods Fall 2018
- The Urban Everyday Spring 2019
- City Immersions Spring 2019
- Contemporary South African Debates Spring 2019
- Urban Research Design Spring 2019
- African Cities Fall 2019
- Critical Urbanisms: Theories and Methods Fall 2019
- Urban Research Design Spring 2020
- City Immersions Spring 2020
- Contemporary South African Debates Spring 2020
- The Urban Everyday Spring 2020
- Studio: Interdisciplinary Urban Research Fall 2020
- Critical Urbanisms: Introduction Fall 2020
Sophie Oldfield co-founded the Critical Urbanisms program at the University of Basel. She is internationally recognized as an urban and human geographer for research on cities in the Global South through her theoretical and primary research and as coeditor of the pathbreaking Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (Routledge, 2014). She is a leader in her discipline, serving as president of the Society of South African Geographers from 2012 to 2014 and helping to establish and develop the Southern African City Studies Network from 2007 to the present.
Her research is grounded in empirical and epistemological questions central to urban theory. Focusing on housing, informality and governance, mobilization and social movement organizing, and urban politics, her work pays close attention to political practice and everyday urban geographies, analysing the ways in which citizens and organized movements craft agency to engage and contest the state. She has a track record of excellence in collaborative research practice, challenging how academics work in and between “university” and “community.” Trained in the United States (PhD, University of Minnesota), Oldfield held the University of Basel–University of Cape Town Professorship in Urban Studies, based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, before being appointed Chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University in 2021.
CV of Sophie Oldfield (PDF, 166.04 KB)