Keynote speakers at the 3rd Annual SAERA Conference, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein
TEBOHO MOJA
Teboho Moja has authored articles on higher education reform issues in areas such as the governance of higher education, policy processes, and impact of globalization on higher education. She is a co-author of a book on educational change in South Africa since the first democratic elections in 1994. Her teaching experience includes high school and university levels. Moja has held key positions at several South African universities including being appointed chair of the Board of Trustees to the largest university in South Africa, the University of South Africa. In 2010 she was appointed visiting professor at the University of Oslo (Norway) and University of Tampere (Finland). She was instrumental in setting up the Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET) in South Africa to monitor and stimulate debates on change issues. Serves on the boards international bodies such as the UNESCO-Institute for international Education Planning and the World Education Market. Her course topics include Current Research in Higher Education, International Perspectives on reform, and Globalization and Higher Education. She has been a policy researcher and policy analyst for higher education in South Africa. She was appointed the Executive Director and Commissioner to the National Commission on Higher Education appointed by President Mandela. The Commission produced a national report that provided a framework for higher education reform in South Africa. Before coming to NYU, Teboho Moja served as a Special Advisor to the Minister of Education.
CARLOS TORRES
Carlos Alberto Torres, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education, and former Director of the UCLA-Latin American Center, is a political sociologist of education who did his undergraduate work in sociology in Argentina (B.A. honors and teaching credential in Sociology, Universidad del Salvador), his graduate work in Mexico (M.A. in Political Science, FLACSO) and the United States (M.A. and Ph.D. in International Development Education, Stanford University), and post-doctoral studies in educational foundations in Canada (University of Alberta). He is also the Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and UCLA. Dr. Torres has been a Visiting Professor in universities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. He has lectured throughout Latin America and the United States, and in universities in England, Japan, Italy, Spain, Tanzania, Finland, Mozambique, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Portugal, Taiwan, Korea, Sweden and South Africa.
Dr. Torres' areas of theoretical research focus on the relationship between culture and power, the interrelationships of economic, political, and cultural spheres, and the multiple and contradictory dynamics of power among and within social movements that make education a site of permanent conflict and struggle.
His empirical research focuses on the impact of globalisation in Latin America, especially on higher education in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Dr. Torres' theoretical and empirical research has resulted in the development of a political sociology of education, highlighted in his much-heralded book with Raymond Morrow, Social Theory and Education. He is considered one of the world's leading authorities on Latin American Studies, and the principal biographer of Brazilian philosopher and critical social theorist, Paulo Freire.
Over the last thirty years, Dr. Torres has contributed to three fields: Latin American Studies, Sociology of Education and Comparative and International Education. In his theoretical work, Dr. Torres has accounted for the major shifts and transformations, national and global, that deeply impacted these fields. A book he wrote with Raymond Morrow, Social Theory and Education, is considered the standard text on theories and meta-theories in Sociology of Education. A book he edited with Robert Arnove, Comparative Education: The Dialectics of the Global and the Local, now in its fourth edition, is the textbook of choice for more than fifty Comparative Education programmes in the English-speaking world. Another of his books, Education, Democracy and Multiculturalism: Dilemmas of Citizenship in a Global World, translated in several languages, suggested new agendas for these fields. All three books contain critical interpretations of cultural and social reproduction theory, theories of the state, analyses of multiculturalism, feminism and other approaches to social diversity, inequality, and the struggle for social justice education.
For the last decade, Dr. Torres has been working from a global perspective that encompasses human rights, pluralism and citizenship, wresting education away from state dominance, and the globalization of economies, communications and labour forces. The question of educating the global citizen is at the top of his research agenda. Understanding the educational policies of the new social democratic governments in Brazil and Argentina, and the impact of the new social movements constitutes the next empirical phase of his research.
JONATHAN JANSEN
Jonathan Jansen is Vice Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State and President of the South African Institute of Race Relations. He holds a PhD from Stanford University, the MS degree from Cornell University, and honorary doctorates of education from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Cleveland State University (USA), and the University of Vermont (USA, 2014). He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Developing World. His book Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past (Stanford 2009) was listed as one of the best books of that year by the American Libraries Association. His new book, Schools that Work, uses video-documentaries to capture what happens inside disadvantaged schools which nevertheless produce the best results in physical science and mathematics in South Africa. He also writes popular books like Great South African Teachers (with two students), We need to talk, and We need to act (2013); and is a columnist for The Times and Die Burger. In 2013 he was awarded the Education Africa Lifetime Achiever Award in New York and the Spendlove Award from the University of California for his contributions to tolerance, democracy and human rights. In May 2014 he received an honorary doctor of letters degree at the University of Vermont and recently Knowledge in the Blood also won the Nayef Al Rodhan Prize, the largest award from the British Academy for the Social Science and Humanities, for its contribution to scholarly excellence and transcultural understanding.