Thomas Coggin

Background

About Thomas Coggin

Dr Thomas Coggin is a Senior Lecturer & Chair of Research in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand. He teaches and supervises in the area of property law, land and tenure reform, legal pluralism, and critical legal geography. He holds a Y2 rating from the South African National Research Foundation. His research lies at the intersection of property law and the urban and spatial environment. He is particularly interested in how property systems structure the appropriation of space in everyday life. This includes examining the impact of dominant legal systems on informal worker livelihoods; assessing how judges interpret space in disputes centring on property law; and exploring legal pluralism to highlight alternative urban governance modes that coexist with and subvert property law systems. As a member of the Researcher & Statisticians Constituency of WIEGO: Women in Informal Employment, Globalising and Organising, he recently published an edited volume with Dr Roopa Madhav entitled Mapping Legalities: Law, urbanisation and informal work. Bringing together over 15 authors across 20 jurisdictions around the world, the volume explored the impact of law on informal worker livelihoods in the context of global urbanisation. He holds a Doctor of Juridical Sciences from Fordham University (Doctor of Laws LLD in South Africa), and is the global co-coordinator of the International Research Group on Law & Urban Space.