Department of Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism People
Head of Department
Dr Mandy Carolissen ( Departmental chairperson 2025-2027 )
email: mcarolissen@uwc.ac.zaAcademic and Administrative Staff
Professor Mbulisi Sibanda
Position: Associate ProfessorTel: +27 (0)21 959 2668
Email: msibanda@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Mbulisi joined the Department in January 2021 as Senior Lecturer specialising in GIScience and Earth Observation Data Applications. He completed his PhD on Optical Remote Sensing of Grassland Biomass in Data Scarce Environments at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg) in 2016. He is an NRF-rated researcher with expertise in GIScience and Geospatial Data Applications in monitoring plant water use and productivity analysis, resource modelling as well as land-use change.Research: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4589-7099
Dr Erin Torkelson
Position: Senior Lecturer
Tel: +27 (0)21 959 2160
Email: etorkelson@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Erin is a human geographer interested in the collision between normative assumptions about cash transfers as public goods and the lived experience of cash transfers as private debts in the Global South. Her work sits at the intersection of political economy, development studies, critical race theory, feminist kinship studies, and postcolonial science and technology studies. Her current project, Bantustan Banking, explores how a preeminent, state-sponsored cash transfer programme has become a means of racialised and gendered dispossession in post-apartheid South Africa. She examines the everyday practices by which poor, black South African women navigate their entitlements to social assistance against the pressures of expropriation built into the payment system.
Dr Mandy Carolissen
Position: LecturerTel: +27 (0)21 959 3597
Email: mcarolissen@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Mandy is a physical geographer with teaching and research interests in integrated water resource management, catchment hydrology, ecosystem services, and the dynamic physical processes that shape our landscapes. Her current research focuses on understanding the spatial and temporal availability of water and storage of a depression wetland (using in-situ hydrological data and remote sensing), and to relate these to ecosystem services.
Ms Mercia Southon
Position: LecturerTel: +27 (0)21 959 2329
Email: msouthon@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Mercia is a Tourism Geographer who joined the department in February 2023 specialising in human geography and tourism development. Mercia is interested in analysing contemporary tourism development patterns with the use of different geographical components across the global South. Her current work focuses on how socio-political and economic changes in a post-apartheid South Africa contributes to rural change and the development of rural tourism. Research interests: rural tourism, land-use change and tourism, game farming and tourism, tourism planning and debates in global niche tourism.Ms Musfiqah Majiet
Position: Associate Lecturer
Tel: +27 (0)21 959 3422
Email: mmajiet@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Musfiqah is a human geographer interested in state-led housing and the evolving role of the state in the provision of housing. Her current research examines a hybrid housing programme that extends financialization by drawing previously unbanked households into private mortgage markets, revealing how the state produces new financial subjects through housing policy. She investigates how and why this programme fails to reach its targeted households, and how state policies compel previously unbanked citizens to engage with private financial markets.
Mr Lindokuhle Khumalo
Position: Associate LecturerTel: +27 (0)21 959 9397
Email: lbkhumalo@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Lindokuhle is a human geographer who joined the department in January 2023 focusing on society and nature relations. His research interests include human dimensions of conservation, environmental justice, land issues, the informal sector and decolonial geographies. Lindokuhle has a project underway that studies land reform beneficiary communities in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal who have voluntarily committed large tracts of their land to nature conservation. Through the lens of political ecology, he investigates the impacts of conservation on their livelihoods and environmental behaviour.Mr David Frenchman
Position: Senior OfficerTel: +27 (0)21 959 2155 (shortcode: 5559)
Email: dfrenchman@uwc.ac.za
Biography
David is the IT specialist in the Department and part of the Academic Support Staff in the Faculty. His work relates primarily to managing both undergraduate and postgraduate computer laboratories. However, he also offers GIS support to staff and students. He is solely responsible for the installation and maintenance of GIS software in the laboratories. GIS support involves compiling and issuing datasets for research and publications. He is also an appointed Commissioner of Oaths in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and his other appointments include being the Health and Safety representative, First Aid and Fire safety representative as part of Risk and Compliance.Ms Micaela Flusk
Position: Departmental Administrator
Tel: +27 (0)21 959 2421
Email: mflusk@uwc.ac.za
Biography
Micaela is an Administrative Officer in the Geography, Environmental Studies and Tourism Department, bringing four years of experience in student and academic support within higher education. She holds an Honours degree with a focus on Linguistics, which has strengthened her communication, organisational and interpersonal skills. She is passionate about providing efficient administrative support, fostering positive relationships with students and colleagues, and contributing to an environment where both staff and students can thrive.
Research Fellows:
Professor Daniel Tevera - NRF C-rated Researcher (2021-2026)
Position: Extraordinary ProfessorBiography
Daniel’s research is located at the interface of Human Geography and Development Studies with Southern Africa as the geographical focus. His early work focused on livelihoods and spatial strategies in the informal economy, migration geographies, and environmental security. However, it is the domain of food and the city that his recent work focuses on. He has served as an expert participant in policy debates around Temporary Labour Migration Schemes in small countries (Commonwealth), African migration (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa), and Migration Policy Framework for Africa (African Union). For three successive years, Daniel organised field trips for third-year and honours students to the hotly contested Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA).Professor Shirley Brooks
Position: Research Fellow
Biography
Shirley is a human geographer focusing on human-environment relationships, in particular postcolonial landscapes of conservation and land in Southern Africa. She teaches in the fields of nature-society relations and the political geography of land. In addition to working within a political ecology framework, she is interested in the quintessentially geographical theme of landscape meanings and contestations. Together with her students, she has explored Human and Non-human Geographies, focusing on Wilderness and Wildness as well as Animal Geographies.
Dr Mark Boekstein
Position: Research FellowBiography
Mark’s main interest in both teaching and research is tourism, particularly tourism’s potential to contribute to economic development. While his teaching focuses on the planning, development, and marketing of sustainable, community-based tourism, his research interests include health and wellness tourism and the use of thermal springs for healing purposes, and English language learning as a tourist attraction. He also has an interest in developments around Cape Town as a gateway for tourism to Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands.Dr Michael Dyssel
Position: Research Fellow
Biography
Michael’s research and teaching interests include conservation and environmental management, urban-ecological challenges, the impacts of tourism, and mapwork. As a way of bridging (sub) disciplinary boundaries in Geography, transdisciplinary, multi-methods research and teaching approaches underpin his work.
Research: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2492-645X
Dr Tinashe P. Kanosvamhira
Position: Honorary Research FellowBiography
Tinashe is an urban geographer in the department. His research primarily focuses on Urban Geography with a specific emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. His diverse research interests encompass various socio-spatial issues, including sustainable infrastructures, governance, livelihood strategies of the less privileged, and food systems. He has previously served as a Teaching Assistant, Part-time Lecturer and Post-doctoral research fellow in the department.Research: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6745-1151
