Dr. Laura Nkula-Wenz is a lecturer and student affairs coordinator for the MA in Critical Urbanisms, University of Basel, as well as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the SNSF-funded Governing Through Design Project, where she co-leads the South Designs initiative together with Prof. Kenny Cupers. She is a human geographer by training with a passion for postcolonial urban theory, African urbanism, new pedagogies of the city, and public culture.
Her research has focused on local urban governance transformation, the impact of international events and urban accolades, on urban experimentation and inter-urban knowledge networks, the nexus of cultural production and urban change, as well as the role of professional integrity in the urban development sector.
In pursuit of her diverse research interests, she has collaborated with colleagues and organisations inside and beyond academia, including Transparency International, Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrade (VPUU), the City of Cape Town’s Department of Arts and Culture, UNESCO and Global Integrity.
Laura is equally committed to emancipatory pedagogy and engaged scholarship. She convenes the postgraduate course Urban Everyday at the Department of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics and is part of the editorial committee at Gateways – International Journal for Community Research and Engagement, an open access refereed journal that responds to an emerging global movement of collaborative, critical and change-oriented community-university research initiatives.
Nkula-Wenz received her PhD in Geography from the University of Münster/Germany, where she also completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in Human Geography, Communication Studies, and Political Science.
Nkula-Wenz’s work has been published in Environment and Planning A: Economy & Space, the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Habitat International, Cultural Trends, Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, as well as in several edited collections. She is also a regular contributor to sub\urban, a multilingual, open access journal for critical urban research, published in Germany. She has also been invited to review for a range of journals, such as CITY, Habitat International, Planning Theory & Practice, IJURR etc.
See Nkula-Wenz’s academic publications on ORCID or Google Scholar. She has also written for The Conversation Africa and developed a series of animated videos on urban planning and integrity. She is also part of the Quote This Woman+ database of experts.
