GCRO researchers present at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in London

GCRO researchers Graeme Götz, Dr Samkelisiwe Khanyile and Dr Mamokete Modiba attended and presented at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference. The conference is one of the world's largest gatherings of geographers and is attended by over 2,000 geographers. The 2026 conference took place in London at the Society and Imperial College London, with some sessions also held online, from Tuesday 1 to Friday 4 September. Professor Peter Hopkins of Newcastle University chaired the conference, which ran under the theme “Geographies of inequalities: towards just places”. The theme explored the many forms of inequality that emerge in global, geopolitical, health and environmental contexts. It also asked how different forms of inequality and injustice intersect. These questions sit at the heart of GCRO’s work on spatial inequality, environmental justice and just transitions in the Gauteng City-Region.

All three researchers presented on 3 September. Together, their papers traced inequality across Gauteng and beyond at progressively wider scales: from the everyday struggles of informal enterprises in a single settlement, to the uneven energy landscapes of Gauteng’s urban periphery, to the dramatic transformation of South Africa’s former homelands.

^{Dr Mamokete Modiba, Graeme Gotz and Dr Samkelisiwe Khanyile at the RGS conference. Photo credit: Motshwaedi Sepeng.}

Dr Khanyile and Dr Modiba attended the conference as part of the NRF-funded Governing a Just Urban Transition (GoJUT) project (2024 to 2026). GoJUT is a University of the Western Cape-led research consortium with partners at the Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and Sheffield. On 3 September, Mamokete presented “Coping with darkness: Energy injustice at the margins of Gauteng’s economy”. She spoke in a session on the overlooked spatial politics of the energy transition. The paper drew on GCRO’s Quality of Life Survey 7 (2023/24), LiDAR mapping and fieldwork in Setswetla, Alexandra. It showed that electricity interruptions cut trading hours and income for informal enterprises and push them towards unsafe coping strategies. It argued that these adaptations reflect systemic exclusion, not resilience. Samkelisiwe presented on the same day, in an afternoon session, a presentation entitled “Beyond the grid: Spatial justice and differentiated energy vulnerabilities in Gauteng’s urban periphery”, in a session called “Sustainable Future Making and its (Uneven) Geographies”. Comparing Gauteng’s core and periphery, the paper found that peripheral energy poverty involves affordability, reliability and the uneven burdens of the energy transition, not just grid access. These dimensions are often missed by policy focused on grid extension.

Graeme Götz attended through the British Academy-funded Extended Urbanisation Project. He co-convened the in-person panel “Extended urbanisation in South Africa’s former homelands” with Prof. Philip Harrison and Prof. Sarah Charlton (both from the University of the Witwatersrand), Prof. Paula Meth (University of Glasgow) and Prof. Jennifer Robinson (University College London), held at Imperial College London on 3 September. The panel was aimed at responding to the striking reversal in the Census 2022. After decades of stagnation or decline, the former homelands have grown faster than the rest of the country between 2011 and 2022. Much of this growth came with a surge in homebuilding on land administered by traditional authorities. Graeme presented “Extended urbanisation in the former bantustans: Extent and underlying processes”, co-authored with colleagues, including GCRO’s Christian Hamann. GCRO’s Dr Ngaka Mosiane was also a co-author on the panel’s paper on “homeland” legacies in Gauteng and eThekwini.