ABRAHAM R MATAMANDA (PhD Urban & Regional Planning) is an NRF Y2-rated Urban and Regional Planner. Abraham lectures in the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Free State (UFS) and is the Deputy Chair of the SARChI Chair on City Region Economies in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at UFS. Currently, he serves as the editor of the Town Planning Journal published by UFS and serves on the academic editorial board of Plos Water Journal. Abraham is also the current Chairperson of the Free State Chapter of the South African Planning Institute (SAPI). He is a fellow of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) Future Professorate Programme Phase 1, third Cohort. Abraham is the South African PI for a global collaborative research project exploring how children and young people from monetary poor households have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic focusing on food, education and play/leisure. His research focuses on urban governance and planning, climate change adaptation and resilience, informal Global South urbanism, urban land markets and housing studies.
VERNA NEL qualified as a town and regional planner at Wits University and obtained her MSc and PhD through UNISA. After three decades of working primarily in municipalities, she moved to the Urban and Regional Planning Department of the UFS. She is a. She is also affiliated with the SARChI Chair on City Region Economies in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at UFS. She is an NRF C2-rated scholar. Besides postgraduate supervision, Verna has written one book and co-edited four books which reflect her broad interests in planning. These include spatial governance, secondary and mining cities, local economic development, and spatial resilience.