Margot Rubin

Margot Rubin

Margot Rubin is an urbanist who works in the fields of human geography and planning.

Rubin has focused on this field and has three degrees in Geography and a PhD in Planning and Politics (which led to several months of fieldwork in the urban jungle of Delhi, India). This has led to a varied career, spanning the civil service (a bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and the Social Housing Foundation) and a policy consultant advising national and international organisations. For the last 20 years, Rubin has primarily been an academic teaching and Researching at Wits University and more recently at Cardiff University in Wales.

Rubin’s work has explored the nature of urban governance, gendered mobility and housing and human settlements in the Global South and is the author or co-author of over 30 book chapters and journal articles on these topics. She has also co-edited two books on urban questions in African cities and beyond (Densifying the City? Global Cases and Johannesburg and Housing in African cities: A lens on urban governance). She continues to write on these topics and is currently researching the Just Urban Transition in South Africa and questions of active mobility in Cardiff, Dar es Salaam and Mamelodi, whilst writing about post-covid governance and co-editing a Handbook on Active Mobility.

Aside from her writing Rubin teaches undergraduate and post-graduate students, is the co-founder of the Gender Urban Research Collective, sits on the Royal Geographical Society Committee for Feminist and Gender Geography Research Group, has stepped down as an editor for the journal African Studies, is on the Cardiff University Press editorial board and runs a series of walking groups in conjunction with community members and NGOs.

When not doing any of things, Rubin can be found slumped over a cup of decaf coffee reading a fantasy novel or (unsuccessfully) trying to keep up with her husband and kids and enjoying her new home in the Vale of Glamorgan.