FOCUS

Researching well-being, agency and structures of inequalities.

AIM

Challenging inequalities in and through higher education for social justice and sustainable human development.

SDGs

The chair strategically aligns work to the 2030 SGDs to guide conversations and choices for research and engagement activities, but also to locate work in the global development conversation.

OBJECTIVES

1. To foster well-being (capabilities expansion) and agency through higher education research.
2. To contribute to reducing inequalities and poverty in and through higher education as a public or common good.
3. To generate knowledge for educational and social change.

THEMES

1. Transitions and Trajectories
2. Knowledge, Curriculum, and Pedagogies
3. Public/Common Good

RESEARCH PROGRAMME

• Theorises, operationalises, and critically analyses policy and practice, framed by concerns with justice, knowledge, diversity, and solidarity
• Connects processes and findings of research to practice to advance public dialogue
• Seeks to influence transformative change in education in South Africa
• Contributes to critical reflection on global development dynamics in ways which foreground human development

IMPACT

Research Team Knowledge Impacts 

Publications in books, book chapters and journals including: Journal of Youth Studies, Third World Quarterly, Oxford Development Studies, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Cambridge Journal of Education, Comparative and International Education Journal (COMPARE), Comparative Education, Journal of Global Ethics, Educational Action Research, Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, Comparative Education, Critical Studies in Education, Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, and Asia Pacific Education Review.  

Capacity building : enabling graduates and postdocs to take up positions across South Africa, in SSA, and globally for example: CODESRIA, UP, UWC, Wits, NWU, Unisa, Malawi, UK (Glasgow, Lancaster), Zimbabwe, USA (Ohio), Kazakhstan, and New Zealand. 

Giving back through peer review: for example, the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Compare, CriSTal, Journal of Action Research, and the Migration and Ethnic Minorities Journal, reviewing funding applications for CODESRIA and the ESRC over many years, and refereeing book proposals, editorial boards and in academic association special interest groups (SIGs.

Impact in our case is: 1) Contributing significant and rigorous knowledge about universities in Africa; 2) Expanding the training of young African scholars in the context of the marginalisation of SSA scholarship; 3) Equitable partnership in a sub-Saharan research network (RAHEDA); 4) Contributing to and advancing African and Africa-based scholarship and training through publications and conferences/webinars/workshops;5) Popular writing, such as research briefs; 6) Arts-based participatory research projects, which empower and expand the agency of youth and community and co-create knowledge; 7) In the education and societal relevance of the knowledge we produce around issues and challenges, such as public-good professional education, access and participation in higher education for black youth, gender and agency, employability, arts-based education, life after university for rural black graduates, citizenship, disability, international students, and more.