As institutions increasingly reckon with histories entangled with slavery and Indigenous dispossession, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts occupy a central role in the strategy and resources of higher education. Yet reparation is rarely offered as a viable strategy for institutional transformation. In Reparative Universities, Ariana…

In South Africa, the scholarship of epistemic justice has taken on an historical gaze with higher education framed as a social institution that might ameliorate the historical traumas of colonialism. Undoing the legacies of colonialism has been framed as the democratisation of the knowledge project. Using the White Paper 3 of 1997 that posits…

This dissertation retells the history of women's studies from a global perspective, challenging traditional U.S. and Eurocentric narratives about this emerging interdisciplinary field. Beginning with questions about why women's, gender, and sexuality studies has incited backlash across a range of cultural and geographic locations, this study draws…

Considering globalization as part of a post-colonial conjuncture, the examination of the politics of decolonization is essential to understand key conflicts in global civil society. Recently, a global movement for the decolonization of higher education has played a key role in this context, with the #RhodesMustFall movement being particularly…

This article argues that the Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 left learners and teachers alike awash in feelings of helplessness, loss, and anguish. While online learning literacy and pedagogy have improved over the course of 2020 and 2021, and interesting and important innovations have…

In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are…

This paper explores the contrast between the policy vision for public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges in South Africa, and governance and funding models that have shaped institutional forms and functioning over time. Policy aspires for TVET colleges to play a role in social inclusion and local economic development.…

The article tracks key moments in teacher education policy and curriculum in South Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Political and social features of education in each decade are outlined, from a racialised and fragmented system of teacher education, to the imagining of alternatives, and the imperative for educational transformation. The…

On 6 November 2020, the "Policy Framework for Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa" was promulgated. It provides high-level principles and guidelines for the internationalisation of higher education in South Africa, lays down specific rules for certain aspects of the process and aims to shape the process of…

Who we are and who we become as educators is intimately connected to the historical and socio-political milieus in which we, ourselves, were educated and continue to work as educators. In this article I demonstrate how conventional conceptual metaphors are effective analytical lenses, through which we can explore our personal educational…

Theatre for Development is one of the most dynamic and controversial theatre movements on the global South. Emerging in Southern Africa in the 1970s to address social and economic problems using theatrical techniques, today it is taught in theatre departments across sub-Saharan Africa and employed in numerous contexts from health care to…

Peer learning is a distinct category of student support gaining popularity globally and in South Africa, although these are typically informal approaches which have not been sufficiently researched to examine their influence and impact. Some scholars have criticised the available research as patchy, inconsistent, and methodologically weak.…

The South African Higher Education sector has undergone major transformation since the end of Apartheid more than 25 years ago. Critical digital literacies and critical (digital) citizenship, aligns with the most important aspects of the transformation agenda, 'the production of socially conscious graduates that will become the thinkers and…

This dissertation is about a historically white university's engagement with what is called the 'coloured question.' It explores how the University of Pretoria (UP) grappled with the question of where 'coloureds' belonged politically, socially and economically in apartheid South Africa -- specifically through the disciplines of sociology and…

Having reviewed several pieces of strategy documents, policy papers, and literature, we concluded that there is no uniform definition of either institutional autonomy or academic freedom (AF). Many different points of view determine the interpretation of these terms. Furthermore, the policymakers (e.g., governments, legislators) can ignore the…