Marius Pieterse

Happy to report that this article has just appeared online in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. It considers how the weddedness of urban governance systems to a hierarchical and exclusionary conception of property, which also underlies South African common law, straitjackets state attempts to govern land conflicts and problematic spatial practices in … More Publication: “Property’s Shadow: Governing Land and Plurality in Durban, South Africa” (with Thomas Coggin)

I have just returned from Budapest, where I attended the IGU Commission on Geography of Governance’s international conference on paradigm shifts in local governance, which took place from 4-6 September 2023. I presented a paper entitled “Legal dimensions of private sector involvement in resilient urban governance: Navigating dual crises of Covid-19 and drought in Nelson … More Conference participation: Paradigm shifts in local and urban governance

The Hague Journal on the Rule of Law is doing a special issue on urban constitutionalism and rule of law, to which I’m happy to be contributing “Rule of law through the ‘urban turn’ in South African constitutionalism”. The special issue follows on a great workshop on rule of law and cities held at Tilburg … More Publication: “Rule of Law through the ‘Urban Turn’ in South African Constitutionalism”

I am currently on a short invited scholarly visit to the Faculty of Law at Freie Universitat Berlin, where next week I will deliver a guest lecture on the relevance of the norms in the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights in and for African cities. You can read more about the talk, or … More Research visit and guest lecture: Freie Universitat Berlin

I am currently in stunning Reykjavik, attending the EURA 2023 conference entitled “The European City: A Practice of Resilience in the Face of an Uncertain Future”, gaining loads of ideas for my own work into the characteristics of resilient and sustainable urban law.

I’m currently on a European research trip, stringing together various commitments. After a lovely week in Amsterdam, where I could revisit the incredible NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, where I spent an amazing 5 months on an individual research fellowship last year), this week I’m privileged to be … More Research visit and talk: Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo

I am currently in Accra, Ghana, attending the Fordham University Urban Law Centre’s 9th annual International and Comparative Urban Law conference, co-hosted by the GIMPA Faculty of Law. Today, Angela van der Berg (based at the University of the Western Cape) and I are presenting a joint, forthcoming paper assessing city responses to the Covid-19 … More Conference presentation: Governing urban crisis through adaptive urban law: Lessons from city responses to Covid-19 in the Netherlands and South Africa

The first article written during my recent (beyond amazing) individual research fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) has appeared (online first and open access!) in the Leiden Journal of International Law. In “The relevance of the African regional human rights system in the urban age” I consider the … More Publication: “The Relevance of the African Regional Human Rights System in the Urban Age”

I was honoured to be the plenary speaker at a seminar on Urban Sustainability, Inclusion and Resilience organised by the EVICT Project at the University of Groningen, on Wednesday 18 January. I presented my work in progress on socio-economic rights as adaptive law, with a focus on South African housing rights jurisprudence. My talk was … More Presentation: Vindicating the right to housing in turbulent times: Resilience, inclusion, sustainability and adaptability in South African housing rights jurisprudence

The German Law Journal has just published this open-access article, which is part of my NRF-funded project on the legal dimensions of corporate involvement in urban governance. This is a theoretical article which argues that “significant strides can be made towards addressing international human rights law’s blind spots when it comes to ensuring corporate accountability … More Publication: “Urbanizing Human Rights Law: Cities, Local Governance and Corporate Power”