I have completed three post-doctoral research fellowships. Most recently, I researched the relationship between art and health at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing, working in the Social Determinants of Health Research Stream. Before this, I was based at the University of Western Cape, I worked on a multi-disciplinary team on the Off-grid Cities project, looking at household and business shifts to alternative water and electricity infrastructure. My first postdoc was at the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg in the Life in the City project, where I built on my PhD research examining public space, its perceptions, use and management, and how this relates to spatial justice. All of my work explores the relationships between public and private, trying to better understand the relationships between individuals, collectives, and social goods/responsibility.
I completed my PhD in Urban and Regional Planning on Gandhi Square, Constitution Hill, and Pieter Roos Park at the University of the Witwatersrand, as part of the NRF-funded project focusing on Spatial Justice and Urban Resilience.
Publications
(2025). ‘Selfhood and inclusive publics: A critical disability lens and creative practice to ground collaborative homelessness research’. Frontiers in Sociology. Special Issue on Innovative Sociological Methods
(2025). ‘Exploring the Impacts of Arts Participation on Healthy Ageing: Assessing the value of art classes for seniors in Rexdale’, Canada Excellence Research Chair – Health Equity and Community Wellbeing. DOI.org/10.32920/28912442.v1
Licorish, D., Middelmann, T., Taha, E., McLeod, R. (2025). ‘Accessing the arts: Accounting
for neurodiversity and disability in performing arts feedback methods’, Report on Research conducted by Xenia Concerts and the Canada Excellence Research Chair – Health Equity and Community Wellbeing.
(2024). ‘A Playing Card in the World’, in Oldfield, Selmeczi and Barnett (eds.) Knowing the City: South African Urban Scholarship from Apartheid to Democracy, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press.
(2023). City sector profile: Water in the City of Cape Town. October 2023
(2023). City sector profile: Energy in the City of Cape Town. October 2023
(2022) ‘Public Space and the Cohesion-Contestation Spectrum’, Geojournal. Co-authored with Carmel Rawhani
(2022). ‘The Production of Space at Pieter Roos Park: Public Space as a Lens into Johannesburg’s Changing Public Culture 1968–2019, South African Historical Journal, https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2071973
(2022). ‘Mixed Evidence on Ownership and Management of Public Space: Cases from Inner-city Johannesburg’, Trialog 4 2019, published 2022.
(2021/2022). ‘Pieter Roos Park and public dwelling: displacement in an inner-city Johannesburg public space network’, Transformation Vol. 107.
(2021). ‘Public Memory and Transformation at Constitution Hill and Gandhi Square in Johannesburg’, in H. Judin (ed.) Falling monuments, reluctant ruins: The persistence of the past in the architecture of Apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
(2019b). ‘Imagining the Future through the Past: A Political History of Constitution Hill since 1983’, South African Historical Journal Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 150-169.
(2019a). ‘Rhythm and connection on Rissik Street: Reflecting on public pace research in inner-city Johannesburg’, Anthropology Southern Africa, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 99-113. (selected as best article for 2019 by Anthropology Southern Africa editors, republished as part of Deja Lu collection in March 2021).
(2015). ‘The Hartebeestpoort Irrigation Scheme: A Project of Modernisation, Segregation and White Poverty Alleviation, 1912-26’, South African Historical Journal, 67, No. 2.
Selected Unpublished Work
PhD thesis: The interactions between public space and spatial (in)justice: Comparing case studies in inner-city Johannesburg
Temba Middelmann 