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20 August 2018 Photo Barend Nagel
WomenOfKovsies Dr Hoppener research affects access of rural youth to university
Dr Mikateko Höppener is also the author of a book titled, Engineering Education for Sustainable Development: A Capabilities Approach, which is based on her PhD research.

Since September 2016, Dr Mikateko Höppener and a team of researchers have been engaged in a four-year long investigation of the multidimensional factors and dynamics that influence low-income learners’ opportunities to access, participate, and succeed in higher education.

Dr Höppener is a Senior Researcher at the university, working under the leadership of Prof Melanie Walker, South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair and Director of the Higher Education and Human Development Research Programme.

Women in academia

Dr Höppener is part of a team comprised of women whom she constantly learns from and who inspire appreciation.. “I am filled with gratitude for being in the position I am in as a young woman. I have the privilege of working with a team of very inspirational, motivating and encouraging women. The Miratho Project is led by a woman and the rest of the team members are also women,” she says.

Access to higher education
The Miratho Project is undertaken in collaboration with Thusanani Foundation, a youth-led, nonprofit organisation. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and the UK’s Department for International Development. Rural and township learners from low-income backgrounds are the subject of this multimethod, longitudinal study which tracks their progress into higher education and through to employment.

Among its key objectives, Miratho aims to develop a multidimensional learning outcomes index as an instrument of public debate and guiding government policy. As such it contributes to transforming and decolonising higher education.  

News Archive

Inaugural lecture by Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo
2011-08-26

 

Present at the inaugural lecture of Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo were from the left: Prof. Lucius Botes, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities; Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo and Prof. Teuns Verschoor, Vice-Rector: Institutional Affairs
Photo: Stephen Collett

Can the South African Communist Party (SACP) ever become a viable option for the ANC or has it become just a flat spare-tyre of the ruling party? Is there more to expect from the SACP or has it run full cycle? These are some of the questions that were brought up by Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo at his inaugural lecture at our university on 24 August 2011.

Prof. Kondlo, head of our Centre for Africa Studies, told the audience that the current SACP (unlike pre-1994) is a party in which theory and intellectual reflection were being eclipsed by politics of pragmatism and warned that self-interest and ambition have become a problem. Delivering his lecture on the topic The South African Communist Party and the Dilemma of the National Democratic Revolution in South Africa, 1994 to date, Prof. Kondlo warned that he may ruffle feathers amongst those with ideological commitments and said that as an intellectual it was his job to irritate.
 
Prof. Kondlo told the audience his lecture would re-open old debates telling them that old questions are making way to the fore, for example the nationalisation debate.
 
Please find Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo’s full inaugural lecture in the attached document. 

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