Mark was educated at the Waldorf School (postulated on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner) and at a private school that encouraged creative, unstructured learning. He completed a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Political Science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where he was also a lecturer from 1982-1987.

He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick, on social movements. As an activist in the anti-apartheid struggle, Mark concluded that transformation will only be possible if the urban poor have access to the kind of technical skills and expertise that the state and business can access.

He has received various merit awards, including election into the international Ashoka Fellowship in 1992. Mark Swilling, community activist, social entrepreneur, urban sociologist and policy advisor, has been building a southern African people-centered urban development movement to strengthen groups serving the urban poor and to transform the institutional, planning, and urban government mechanisms of southern African cities.

Professor Mark Swilling is currently the Division Head: Sustainable Development in the School of Public Management and Planning at the University of Stellenbosch, Academic Director of the Sustainability Institute, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Warwick Institute of Governance and Public Management, Warwick University (UK).

Mark has helped to establish many civic initiatives, including the National People's Bank, a federation of community banks and various service organizations in South African cities. He is widely published and is on the Editorial Board of leading academic journals, namely Urban Forum, Administratio Publico, and Politeia. He has assisted in the initiation of various NGOs in various parts of South Africa and has contributed extensively to public debate in the popular press on issues related to development, democratisation, local governance and social movements.

Mark Swilling was co-founder, former Director and Professor of the Graduate School of Public and Development Management (P&DM), in the faculty of Management at University of the Witwatersrand, 1993-1997, that trained post-apartheid civil servants.

The programme was established to prepare South Africans from historically disadvantaged backgrounds for senior leadership positions in the post-1994 democratic government.

Prior to joining the Graduate School of Public and Development, Professor Swilling worked for PLANACT - an urban development NGO which he helped establish in 1985. Here his main duties included providing the democratic movement with technical and policy support during the lead-up to the first democratic elections in 1994, with particular reference to urban development and the transformation of local government.

He also participated in the active design, facilitation and implementation of large-scale housing delivery projects in the Eastern Cape, North West Province, and Gauteng. He assisted in the initiation of various NGOs in various parts of South Africa, is on the Editorial Boards of leading academic journals, and serves on the International Advisory Committee of CASSAD, Nigeria. With others, Mark founded PLANACT to provide this service.

However, he remained based in the University as a lecturer and then as a full-time policy researcher. He re-joined PLANACT full-time in 1990 and worked for PLANACT on a full-time basis until 1993.

Mark Swilling also helped establish the Metropolitan Chamber that negotiated an entirely new urban system for the greater Johannesburg metropolitan area.