Wits City Institute
The Wits City Institute (WCI), was located on the Braamfontein Campus of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa from 2015-2019. Through the programme in Critical Architecture and Urbanism and other programmes, the WCI stimulated and produced excellent, creative research. The City Institute was the last of the six 21st Century Research Institutes to be established by Wits after 2000. The purpose of establishing a City Institute at Wits was to grow a still stronger research environment around an identified common focus: critical theory in the spatial disciplines around the city and its complexities with a humanities approach.
The development of the Institute as a substantive presence in the intellectual landscape of city research in South Africa and elsewhere was under the directorship of Professor Noeleen Murray who held the A.W. Mellon Foundation Chair of Critical Architecture and Urbanism. Generously funded by the A.W. Mellon Foundation, the institute developed the University’s contribution to the growing dialogue and collaboration at the intersection of the humanities, architecture and urbanism, the core focus around the prestigious award in the Foundation’s Humanities Architecture and Urbanism grant category.
