Bio
Daanyaal Loofer is a Research Assistant to Edgar Pieterse, the Director of the African Centre for Cities and currently registered for a PhD in the APG department at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He holds a Masters in City and Regional Planning from UCT with a background in Geography, Environmental Sustainability and GIS from the University of the Western Cape.
At the ACC, Loofer has been involved with projects that address most notably technology, and digital infrastructure in African cities, while also touching on the more social aspects of LGBTQI+ identity, safety, inclusivity and citizenship. His research interests stem from spatial justice and span counter-mapping, Southern and postcolonial praxis, participatory planning and design, influencing the beginning of his PhD research to provide a lens on radical cartography practices in the South that leads to democratic-buiding between grassroots, NGO and state roleplayers.
He currently teaches in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics for the Metropolitan scale studio, convened by Prof Nancy Odendaal. Here, Daanyaal brings his research into practice through GIS and hybrid analogue mapping techniques for planners, interested in pedagogical change for built environment graduates.
Previously, Loofer has served as the Validation Administrator at the Commonwealth Association of Architects and has recently taken up a post as Zeit-Stiftung Research Fellow at the UNITAC City-Science Lab in Hamburg, Germany.
