Joanna Watterson

PhD student

Transitional energy landscapes in urban South Africa: Producing and governing the off-grid in Cape Town and Johannesburg

Biography

Qualifications

• 2021: MPhil Geographical Research, University of Cambridge.
• 2020: BA(Hons) International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL).

Awards

• 2022 and 2023: Lucy Cavendish College Travel, Research, and Conferences Award for Research.
• 2022 and 2023: Department of Geography Postgraduate Funds in Support of Fieldwork.
• 2020: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Programme Funding for MPhil and PhD.
• 2020: Rumford Prize for top performing student in PIR, RHUL.
• 2020: Best undergraduate dissertation, RHUL.

Research

This PhD explores the transitional urban energy landscapes of Cape Town and Johannesburg and the increasing “off-grid” solar practices of high- and low-income end-users on a household scale. Infrastructure can be seen to reflect the materialisation of citizen-state relations, particularly in South Africa, where the political transition to democracy is materialised through citizen expectations surrounding access to services. This project therefore contributes to emergent off-grid cities research by conceiving of ‘off-gridding’ as a practice/process involving diverse actors and agents, with implications for governance on both the scales of the urban and the state.

Publications

Conference and workshop presentations (selected)

• November 2023: Off-Grid Cities Stakeholder Engagement Workshop (organised and chaired), University of the Western Cape, Cape Town.
• August 2023: Towards a framework of ‘off-gridding’: infrastructure, citizenship, and off-grid practices in urban South Africa, Royal Geographical Society, London.
• June 2023: Governing heterogeneous urban energy landscapes: Global North and South perspectives, Utrecht University.
• April 2023: 2nd Annual Electricity Wheeling Conference, MILLA SA, Cape Town.
• March 2023: Exploratory Workshop on the Energy Crisis in Gauteng, co-organised with colleagues at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, the Public Affairs Research Institute, and Gauteng Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Johannesburg.
• June 2022: Infrastructure, inequality, and the neo-apartheid city, Urban Studies Foundation, London.
• June 2022: (Re)making infrastructures in response to sustainability and climate emergencies: challenges, strategies, and opportunities, University of Manchester.
• June 2022: ReWorking work: labour and livelihoods in the global South, Philomathia Social Sciences Research Symposium, Cambridge.
• December 2021: Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW) Doctoral Training Course on Co-Producing Doctoral Urban Research in the Urban South, University College London.

Teaching

• 2023 – 2024: Undergraduate supervision, The Geographies of Hope
• 2022: Undergraduate supervision, Citizenship, Cities and Civil Society.
• 2022: Undergraduate supervision, The Geographies of Global Urbanism.

External activities

• 2023 – Present: Co-convenor of the Global Energy Nexus in Urban Settlements (GENUS) interdisciplinary research group, University of Cambridge.
• 2022 – Present: Convenor of postgraduate student group, Gender in Academic Space.
• 2021 – present: Member of Off-Grid Cities interdisciplinary research group, working with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, the University of the Western Cape, and the University of Witwatersrand.
• 2021 – 2022: Postgraduate representative for the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, Department of Geography.
• 2020 – present: Member of the GENUS group.