In a small community space in Westdene, Bloemfontein, postgraduate Sociology students from the University of the Free State (UFS) recently found themselves learning far beyond the boundaries of a traditional classroom. They mixed mud, worked with recycled bottles and tyres, reflected in dialogue circles, and collaborated directly with community knowledge holders in an immersive research initiative rooted in indigenous knowledge systems and decolonial scholarship.

The initiative reflects how young UFS academics and students are using research, creativity, and community engagement to address real societal and environmental challenges.

For Dr Nombulelo Shange and Dr Sello Sele, the project represents more than just an academic exercise. It is an attempt to rethink how sociology is taught, researched, and experienced in South Africa.

The initiative, developed through the Sociology of Social Movements and Decoloniality Research Cluster, combines indigenous mud-building practices, environmental sustainability, participatory research methods, and collaborative learning in ways rarely seen in conventional higher education spaces.

Learning through practice

Dr Shange says her own research journey influenced the direction of the project.

“I was influenced by my scholarship and working with African healers, traditional practitioners, and indigenous African churches. There are these interesting approaches to knowledge production and even just social life, where praxis either comes before theory or happens almost simultaneously; we learn while we practise,” she explains.

While Sociology students engage deeply with theory in the classroom, she believes theory can sometimes feel distant or inaccessible.

“It was important for us to show students the theory in action.”

The project was further shaped through collaboration with indigenous knowledge practitioners and scholars such as Lenosa Mahapang, Dr Anita Venter, and Dr Busisiwe Ntsele, whose work in indigenous building practices and community-engaged scholarship helped create the foundation for the initiative.

For Dr Sele, the project also responds to a deeper challenge within South African higher education.

“Knowledge production in South African universities remains largely influenced and dependent on Eurocentric epistemologies, which often favour a textual, detached, and extractive mode of enquiry,” he says.

“This reproduces power relations between researchers and the communities they study. A project of this nature attempts to dismantle that tradition by advocating for a shift from ‘research on communities’ to ‘research with communities’.”

Indigenous knowledge and sustainability

During the workshop, students worked with indigenous mud-building techniques alongside recycled materials such as tyres and bottles to construct environmentally conscious structures.

For Dr Sele, the environmental dimension of the project cannot be separated from broader social concerns.

“We’re currently living in a world engulfed by various environmental crises. One way to respond is to reuse materials such as bottles and tyres to design environmentally friendly structures,” he says.

“At the same time, we’re reviving indigenous knowledge systems, not for their own sake, but also as a means of community self-determination and development in harmony with nature.”

The project draws on participatory action learning and action research (PALAR), a methodology that prioritises collaborative learning, democratic participation, and shared knowledge production.

Rather than positioning students only as researchers, the project encouraged them to become collaborators and co-creators alongside community members.

“As things stand in higher education, students are merely trained to be researchers rather than collaborators,” says Dr Sele. “Through this project, we wanted to equip students with the value of applying their theoretical knowledge and understanding the power of collaborative learning.”

Empowering students to shape the future

Beyond the physical structures created during the workshop, both academics see the initiative as an investment in student development and confidence.

“Student success is so important for me,” says Dr Shange. “The youth of today are living through the broken promises of 1994. I wanted, even in the short term, to provide them with a different way of seeing the world, thinking, and being.”

She hopes that the experience will help students recognise their own value beyond academic performance or economic circumstances.

“I wanted them to know, even for a brief moment in time, that they are important and that they matter, just for being themselves.”

The initiative also encourages students to produce opinion pieces and academic papers based on their experiences, giving many their first opportunity to publish written work.

“Having your first media byline in your twenties is a big deal,” Dr Shange says. “My hope is that these outputs give them a fighting chance when they explore the next chapter of their lives.”

For the lecturers, the project is also about showing students that young people can actively shape communities, knowledge systems, and sustainable futures.

For both academics, the project also reflects a personal commitment to reconnecting scholarship with communities and lived realities.

Before returning to academia, Dr Shange worked in the environmental justice sector, where she was involved in community mobilisation and activist work.

“It is unfortunately not often that one does that kind of active community work in academia,” she reflects. “I am always going to be drawn to work that has African indigenous knowledge rooted in it. So much has been lost and stolen, and I think it is important to rediscover and reimagine who we are in the face of this historical erasure.”

Dr Sele describes the initiative as a learning experience for himself, too.

“When Dr Shange proposed the idea of community-based interdisciplinary work, I saw it as an opportunity to be part of something I had never done before,” he says. “The project has also contributed to my own learning.”