Caryn Abrahams is an Associate Professor based at the Wits School of Governance and is also the current Research Director. Her interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on governance and state discourses, and having worked for several years in civil society, there is a distinctly justice-bent in her scholarly endeavours. 

The questions that animate her work relate to what the underlying discourses and spaces of discretion within decision-making are, irrespective of whether the scope is urban governance, urban food supply systems, algorithms, or social cohesion. 

Being an urban geographer by training, her specific interdisciplinary focus is on socio-spatial inequality and the sets of policy decision-making that can reproduce and maintain inequalities. 

She grew up in Lenasia, Johannesburg and now calls Ekhurhuleni, home. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh (2010) based at the Centre for African Studies.