Staff
Back row: David Everatt | Chris Wray | Graeme Gotz
Middle row: Darlington Mushongera | Dr Sally Peberdy | Kavesha Pillay-Damon | Kerry Bobbins | Annsilla Nyar
Front row: Potsiso Phasha | Maryna Storie | Adele Underhay | Sammy Masehe | Josephine Musango | Alexis Schäffler
Professor David Everatt, Executive Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), has over 17 years of experience in applied socio-economic and development research, designing and implementing monitoring systems, and programme evaluation. He has managed and/or participated in over 300 development projects, primarily in Africa. He was responsible for path-breaking research into youth marginalisation and out-of-school youth in South Africa in the early 1990s; his research into political violence was quoted by Nelson Mandela at the UN; he was the chief evaluator of the South African Constitutional Assembly between 1995 and 1997; and has served on successive ANC election polling teams since 1994 until the present. David designed civic education programmes in Kenya and Uganda, and led the Advisory Team reviewing Kenya’s Governance, Justice, Law and Order Sector (GJLOS) Reform Programme. He also headed a 2-year study of sustainable livelihoods in the 21 poorest nodal areas in South Africa. He was Vice-President (sub-Saharan Africa) for the ‘Sociology of Youth’ committee of the International Sociological Association for 10 years, and now sits on their Advisory Board. David has published five books and his articles have appeared in local and international journals. David is (happily) married with two (wonderful) children.
Sammy is currently employed by GCRO as a Receptionist. She runs a resource centre (for GCR relevant documents, reports and publications) and works as an events coordinator. Sammy started at Eldo Coaches as a receptionist and coach hire consultant, before moving to Freight Company in Linbro Park, where she was later promoted to an export and import clerk. After two years Sammy joined an NGO where she worked as a receptionist/events coordinator, and was responsible for a resource database & publication sales.Sammy is currently studying her second year of a BA Degree in Psychology with Wits Plus, and hopes to follow up with an Honours degree.
Graeme is Director of Research at the Gauteng City Region Observatory. In this capacity he works with a group of Senior Researchers and Researchers to define and drive the research agenda of the Observatory. Until June 2009, Graeme was a Specialist: Strategy & Policy in the Central Strategy Unit, Office of the Executive Mayor, at the City of Johannesburg. He developed a number of strategies including the 2006 Growth and Development Strategy and the 2007 Inner City Regeneration Charter. Before joining the City he was a consultant for four years, specializing in local government and urban development. During this period he was the principal author of the 2004 State of South African Cities Report. Between 1997 and 2001 he was a member of staff at the Graduate School of Public & Development Management (P&DM), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, serving as Manager of the Local Government Programme, lecturer on the Masters of Management: Public & Development Management, and designer and convener of the MM: Local Governance and Development. In 1995 and 1996 he worked as a researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies. Graeme’s academic work focuses on city development and urban renewal, urban economic development, local government, government strategy, intergovernmental relations and state theory.
Annsilla is a Senior Researcher at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. In this capacity she is responsible for contributing to the complex multi-disciplinary research agenda of the Observatory, which includes high-level project management. She has over 15 years of experience in the development world. Her work focuses centrally on development issues related to social justice, civil society, human rights, democracy and governance.
Annsilla’s key interest in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) is in people, the greatest asset of the GCR. She is currently working on research which critically examines the social fabric of the GCR, the inclusions and exclusions which structure life in the GCR including the aspects that divide us such as race, class and gender, and the prospects for social cohesion. She is also working on research which defines the ‘construct’ of the GCR, theoretically and analytically, with a particular emphasis on understanding how residents and citizens of the GCR perceive the spaces in which they live, and conceptualise their social, economic and political identities in relation to it.
Annsilla holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN). She is currently reading for a PhD degree through the Department of Politics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) with Professor Rupert Taylor.
Adele Underhay is currently employed by the GCRO as Senior Finance and Administration Manager. She started her career in banking, before moving to a position as Senior Admin Clerk at a Primary School. She then spent twelve years managing the finances for Consulting and Geotechnical Engineers in Rivonia. Adele has been at the University of the Witwatersrand in various positions since August 2000. Adele was involved with the i-Wits Oracle projects for three years. This project was formed to revamp the Finance, HR and Student Systems at Wits into one integrated system.Adele is a member of Council and Senate at the University and serves on various committees representing Support Staff. Adele has been married for over 30 years and has three grown up sons and is a grandmother. She is an avid orchid grower and enjoys riding pillion on an 1100 BMW tourer.
Alexis Schäffler is a researcher at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. She holds a Masters in Sustainable Development, Planning & Management (Cum Laude) at the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch University. She also has an Honours degree in Sustainable Development, Planning and Management (Cum Laude) and a triple-major degree in Economics, Politics and Decision-Making. Alexis was the project manager for the Green Strategic Programme for Gauteng, a programme that informs the objectives of departments and municipalities working in Gauteng to build a sustainable city-region economy. Her academic interests lie in green economic development paths, social-ecological systems and valuing ecosystem services as central to the transition to sustainable economies and cities. Within this her current work focuses on‘green infrastructure’ as a strategy for enhancing the resilience of people and nature in urban landscapes and expanding conceptions of infrastructure. She is currently collaborating with internationally acclaimed authors on resilience, ecosystem services and green infrastructure, work that will be published in 2012. Alexis is also investigating food security and the material and resource inputs that affect food flows in the city-region. She will be expanding her Masters into a PhD.
Darlington Mushongera is a Researcher and Economist at the GCRO. Prior to joining the GCRO, Darlington worked as a Research Economist at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) at the University of the Witwatersrand. During his tenure at CALS, Darlington undertook extensive research work on municipal governance in South Africa with a focus on basic service provision (mainly domestic water supply). His other work includes municipal tariff analysis, varieties of governance in basic service provision, budget analysis, education finance and environmental economics. Between 1999 and 2005, Darlington worked as an Economist and eventually a Chief Economist for the Zimbabwean Government in a rural development, planning and management capacity. During this time, Darlington was responsible for planning, implementing and monitoring numerous micro-scale rural development projects in the education, health, road transport and water sectors. He holds a B.Sc. Honours in Economics degree and a Masters in Rural and Urban Planning both from the University of Zimbabwe. Darlington is currently working on a PhD proposal on water governance in which he intends to compare how variations in mechanisms for water service provision have impacted on access to basic water for the poor in South Africa’s metropolitan areas. Darlington is a member of the Economic Society of Southern Africa, the Organisation of Social Science Research in East and Southern Africa (OSSREA) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). His research interests are in economic governance, economic development, local government, the role of institutions on economic performance and econometric modelling.
Dr Sally Peberdy is a Senior Researcher at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. Before joining GCRO she taught urban geography at the University of the Western Cape. Previously, she was the Project Manager for the Southern African Migration Project in Johannesburg. She has extensive experience in research related to cross border migration and trade in southern Africa and has made contributions to policy debates and training of officials around these issues in South and southern Africa. She is the author and co-author of reports for various South African national, provincial and municipal government departments including Home Affairs, Labour and Social Development, Gauteng and the City of Johannesburg. She has also authored reports for international organisations including the Global Commission on International Migration, the International Organisation for Migration, Realising Rights, the World Bank, DFID and IDRC. She has worked extensively across the SADC and her research activities and focus has meant that she has also developed networks with governments, academics, NGOs, community organizations in the rest of Africa, Europe (including the UK), North America, and South Asia. Her work on migration has been recognised by the Mail & Guardian Book of South African Women. She is the author of Selecting Immigrants: National Identity and South Africa’s Immigration Policies, 1910-2008 published in 2009 by Wits University Press which won her a University of the Witwatersrand research prize. Born in Kenya she has lived in South Africa since 1994.
Kerry Bobbins holds a BSc Honours degree in Integrated Water Management and completed her MSc in Environmental Water Management in 2011. Kerry completed her degrees at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where she was also a graduate assistant and practical administrator. Kerry has worked on developing a form-process framework to identify and characterise alluvial fans in the Baviaanskloof Valley and has developed restoration guidelines to address water retention capacity issues in the valley. This work fed into broader project objectives spearheaded by a Dutch funded NGO, Living Lands, and the Eastern Cape Restoration Programme (ECRP). Kerry has recently returned from Wageningen University in The Netherlands having completed two additional Masters courses in Environmental Policy through the SKILL (Stimulating Knowledge Innovation through Life-long Learning) Programme.
Potsiso is currently employed as an urban research intern at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. He holds an MSc degree in Development Planning and an undergraduate BSc (Honours) degree in Urban & Regional Planning. Potsiso completed his degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand where he was also a senior tutor and lecturer assistant. For his Masters dissertation, Potsiso studied the ways in which street artists and skaters appropriate and negotiate public space in inner Johannesburg using photography and film. Potsiso has worked on reviewing local municipality spatial development frameworks and has undertaken research into the National Treasury National Development Partnership Grant. He has a strong interest in urban photography and was an active member of Yeoville Studio, a participatory research initiative of the Wits School of Architecture and Planning. He has been the winner of several awards including the University of the Witwatersrand’s Post-Graduate Merit Award (2010/11); the Mallows-Pintoroux Prize for academic excellence; and the South African Planning Institute Award for ‘Innovative research method in understanding how urban youth perceive public space’ (2010). Potsiso has also recently returned from attending the Human Cities Symposium held in Belgium, where he presented his paper titled ‘Autophotography: a tool for recording ways in which street skaters and street artists have appropriated space in Johannesburg’.
