Susan Parnell

Susan Parnell is a Global Challenges Professor in Urban Development at the University of Bristol. She co-founded the African Centre for Cities and continues to be an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town. She has held previous academic positions at Wits University and the University of London (SOAS) and visiting research fellowships from the LSE, Oxford University, Durham University, the British Academy.

She was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UC in 2011/2 and Emeka Anyaoku Visiting Chair University College London in 2014/15. She has been actively involved in local, national and global urban policy debates around the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal and is an active advocate for better science policy engagement on cities.

A regular consultant, most recently she prepared a briefing paper for the G20 on cities and is currently working for UCLG on issues of decentralisation. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications, historical and contemporary, that document how cities respond to policy change.

Recent books include Building a Capable State: Post Apartheid Service Delivery (Zed, 2017) and The Urban Planet (Cambridge, 2018). Sue has served on the Boards of the NGOs Sustainable Energy Africa, the Gender Advocacy Group and the Isandla Institute – all in South Africa.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) University of the Witwatersrand (1979 — 1993)