University transformation under the microscope: searching for 'deep transformation'

The report of the national Transformation Oversight Committee (TOC) in South African higher education has just been published. The report has been prepared by a research team of the HSRC, led by me. For doing the analysis of annual reports of public universities, this team was truly the 'dream team', including Dr Sam Fongwa (who is a specialist on community engagement and higher education), Dr Bongiwe Mncwango (who is a specialist on skills development and higher education), Ms Zama Mthombeni (who is a specialist on university transformation), and Dr Thelma Oppelt (a specialist on higher education teaching and learning). 

The full report is available here. 

A short article on the report is published in University World News on 23 June 2023.

A Global Handbook of Student Politics

Congratulations to Dr Manja Klemencic on completing the amazing anthology "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Student Politics and Representation in Higher Education" with contributions from across the world. What a feature!

The book starts with an introduction by the editor, Manja Klemencic (Harvard University, USA) and a set of chapters on theoretical considerations. It then follows with empirical chapters on student politics and representation in an international comparative perspective from Africa, the Commonwealth, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and so forth, as well as individual country chapters covering a wide range of countries. 

For more details see Manja's website at Harvard and Bloomsbury.

New York University - Exhibition and Book Launch

April was a whirlwind.

After the 'Boston Tour' (see previous post) I travelled with Dineo by train from Boston to New York City for a series of engagements at New York University (NYU) with Prof Teboho Moja and her students, and to meet with research funders at Carnegie and Mellon Foundations. 

We started on Saturday, 8 April with a wonderful brief time meeting up with Claudia Frittelli from Carnegie, discussing our ongoing work, and all that while walking through the amazing art on display at the metropolitan museum (the Met), walking through Central Park, and eventually going for Pizza. We ate a lot of pizza in the US. 

On Sunday, 9 April, I had a first meeting with Prof. Teboho Moja, New York University (NYC), the host of the book launch on Monday and the HSRC-Univen exhibition at NYU. On Sunday, Prof Moja and I participated early in the morning in an eNCA segment #Today with Rofhiwa Madzena which was the first media engagement on the exhibition and book launch at NYU. It was aired live on eNCA. 

On Easter Sunday afternoon, Prof. Moja invited Dineo and I to a Sunday Easter lunch at the house of Dr Lenora Magubane in Harlem (one of the South African makoti in New York, wife of famous SA photographer Peter Magubane) alongside several SA expatriates and friends of the host. 

On Monday, 10 April, Dineo and I set up the exhibition "Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the Context of the Student Movement" at Steinhardt College, NYU, in Washington Square. Before that on Monday morning (5.30 am EST, 11.30 am SAST), Prof Moja, Dr Keamo Morwe and I also participated in a interview (via Zoom) on SAfm Radio for #SAfmTalkingPoint.

Mr Sherwin Brice-Pease, UN correspondent journalist of SABC News and his film crew Aaron came to cover the exhibition opening and book launch of #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath (published by the HSRC Press). 

Brice-Pease interviewed Prof Moja and I and produced a fantastic segment that was aired on SABC News throughout Tuesday 10 April. What a professionalism at work! The clip can be found here. Dr Keamo Morwe of Univen (my co-PI)  again joined the launch online via Zoom. 

On Tuesday the exhibition continued from 10am to 4pm at NYU. In the afternoon (4pm EST, 10pm SAST), Dr Morwe and I participated in a live SABC News TV interview (Peter Ndoro’s segment - part of the Full View). In between I went to the Mellon Foundation offices and brought them three of the rich publications that have come from the Student Movement Project so far: the books Reflections of South African Student Leaders, 1994-2017 (Council on Higher Education & African Minds, 2020), Restoring Wellbeing after Protests: Lessons from #FeesMustFall (HSRC, 2022), and the book we launched in NY, #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath: Violence, Wellbeing and the Student Movement in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2022). 

On Wednesday, the exhibition continued from 10 am to 4pm at NYU. In the later From 5 pm – 6.30 pm I gave a seminar in the Prof Teboho Moja’s Student Affairs Master’s class at NYU entitled “International Comparative Student Affairs”. We removed the exhibition and stored for travelling back to SA. 

It was a beautiful farewell dinner with Prof Moja on Wednesday after the seminar. We discussed the future collaborative work related to the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa and the establishment and operation of a Community of Practice (COP) for research on student affairs in Africa.

International Comparative Student Affairs: The Boston tour

NASPA 

is the largest student affairs professional organisation in the world and its annual conference of 2023 drew over 6,000 participants. What a huge circus - what an amazing knowledge space to be in. Knowledge overload. The international symposium on Sunday was a great start to the conference - a smaller space, a smaller group. From the 4-person international student affairs researcher consortium made up of Dr Lisa Bardill-Moscaritolo (UAE), Dr Brett Perozzi (USA), Dr Birgit Schreiber (D), and I, all but Birgit were there to present and receive a NASPA award for excellence in international research!

Lisa, Brett and I made two presentations together, one was an analysis of our student affairs Covid-19 and SDG data using a very big lens of Global South / Global North. 

The question 'how far have we come with the professionalization of student affairs in Africa' sparked some interesting comparative discussion among student affairs practitioners in the session where I presented alone. The participants in the session included a South African expatriate in the USA as well as several SAS practitioners who have international experience. It was a lively session and as the photos attest I was clearly in my element :) :)

I did feel that the more practice rather than research oriented audience in the session would have preferred a different empirical approach with more textured case studies etc. while my presentation was based on a content and discourse analysis of the professionalisation discourse in 10 years of publications in the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa. 

I also attended a knowledge community luncheon of the 'masculinities KC', which talked a lot about organisational matters and less about the way SAS practitioners actually work with masculinities (affirming, shaping, etc.) on university campuses. It also seemed to me a very LGBTIQ+ focused discourse - which is a discourse that has moved from the margins more towards a normalised centre - but at the same time very little talk has been on the 'toxic masculinities' that one so often encounters on university campuses, on GBV, heteronormativity, and also affirming positive 'straight' masculinity (alongside various kinds of queer masculinities). Altogether a very interesting set of conversations at the KC, a plenary session and a panel I attended on these topics. 

Something that Dineo found peculiar about the American way of talking and making a point is what she called 'oversharing', that is pre-cursoring everything with a self-positioning (in terms of one's personal background, upbringing, family life, personal and familial tragedies, career and career struggles, sufferings etc.). It appears in order to be able to make a 'legitmate' point one had to establish - by rule - one's point of departure as one of pain and suffering so as to appear authentic and elicit an emphatic audience. Oversharing to fake authenticity and establish legitimacy? 

At Boston College in Newton I had the wonderful opportunity to meet up with the colleagues at the Centre for International Higher Education (CIHE), especially, Dr Rebecca Schendel, Dr Chris Glass, Prof Gerardo Blanco and, of course, Prof Phil Altbach. 

I had long conversations with Rebecca and Gerardo in the morning; Rebecca and Phil over lunch, and eventually, after my seminar presentation, I interviewed prof Phil Altbach. 

My presentation was on "International Comparative Student Affairs" and what we can learn about this as a 'field of study' from the research that Lis, Brett and I presented just days earlier at NASPA. I also included in that analysis my work on student activism with Phil and Didem Turkoglu, which was published in International Higher Education in February 2020 and June 2022 respectively. 

Part of the 'Boston Tour' were two more meetings with wonderful higher education experts. I spent an afternoon with Dr Manja Klemencic from Harvard talking research, life, family, publishing, projects, funding, etc. etc. as she and her daughter took me and Dineo around Harvard Yard, Harvard Square, and Kennedy Park, and eventually the tall (and ugly) Humanities building. Manja just finished editing a new Handbook on Student Representation and I proudly contributed an Africa introduction chapter for it. 

The second expert and fried that I met in Boston is the wonderful Monroe France who just relocated from NYU to Tufts to take up a new role in Boston. Discussions resolved around the shocking anti-Social Justice and anti-Critical Race Theory legal debates in many US states, as well as the ongoing case against the use of race as criterion in affirmative action (university admission criteria) and related worrisome topics (e.g. legislation against gender reaffirmations / transitioning). I don't think I would have known so deeply and intimately the depth of these ongoing conversations in the US, how polarising and threatening of freedoms and social justice gains they are, and how conservative and highly problematic some of the debates and demands have become. 

So much for the Boston Tour - 31 March to 9 April 2023. 

2023 NASPA Award: Best Practice in International Research and Scholarship

Congratulations to the fabulous consortium of student affairs researchers who just won their second international excellence award. After ACPA awarded us two years ago, this year it is NASPA.

What a fantastic team.

Dr Birgit Schreiber (Germany) in absentia

Prof Thierry Luescher (South Africa)

Dr Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo (United Arab Emirates)

Dr Brett Perozzi (United States)

This photo was taken the day after the actual award was presented, while Lisa, Brett and I, and Dineo, were having supper at the Sports Club at Omni in Boston, just next to the Convention Centre where the NASPA conference was held. We received this award for our work on global Student Affairs and Covid-19, as well as the follow-up work on the UN SDGs and SAS. 

Poetic inquiry as innovative research method

 

Poetry has the power to transform. By creating poems from qualitative 'data', it is possible to communicate knowledge in a new way, reaching new audiences, and generating impact in different ways.

In the last three days, it has been an absolute privilege to be in the company of accomplished poets, students, emerging and established researchers, and learn for the first time about poetic inquiry. This research method conceptualises ways of transforming qualitative 'data' into poems. One such way is called 'poetic transcription'; a related output are so-called found poems. 

The above is a snip from the visual representation of our workshop proceedings (day 1). Among the participants and attendees of the "Harvesting Poetry" workshops were: 

Heidi van Rooyen, Raphael d’Abdon, Duduzile Ndlovu, Yvonne Sliep, Angela Hough, Kirsten Deane and Marilyn Couch. The participants included the amazing Nova (Lebohang Masango), Bernadette Muthien, Adam Cooper, and many others. 

Poetry (as well as theatre, puppetry, visual essays from photovoice, etc.) are all methods that have a serious decolonising potential. After the suppression of oral cultures, oral histories and oral knowledges, including indigenous knowledges, these innovative methods of conducting social research have such as huge potential to transform. 

The important matter is to keep our hearts and minds open to learning, innovation, and seeking better and stronger connections not only with grassroots as 'data source' but also as the one's for who our research ultimately is (beyond funders and commissioners) if it is to have any real impact.

Policy Futures International Webinar Series: #FeesMustFall and related changes in student politics in twenty-first century Africa

Policy Futures International Webinar Series:  #FeesMustFall and related changes in student politics in twenty-first century Africa

Thursday 16 March 2023,  at 14:00 - 15:30

Add to calendar

Online event: Register

Keynote: Thierry M. Luescher 

Discussants: Rachel Brooks and Judith Bessant

In the course of the last twenty years, student politics in Africa has been impacted by a number of important changes, including the macro changes in the political and socio-economic environments of African nations; changes in the size, nature, and institutional composition of higher education provision along with the expansion, transformation, and fragmentation of student bodies; the changing political character of student governments and changing role of student representation in university governance; technological changes and new repertoires of student political agency; and a new student political discourse on higher education. These changes are interrelated, pronounced differently across the continent and institutions but overall reflective of the large-scale political, socio-economic, and educational transformations that African societies have undergone in the twenty-first century. Against a high-level overview of these changes, this keynote will focus on three developments that are particularly evident in the 2015/16 student movement in South Africa: (1) the entanglement of student politics with multipartyism and its impact on student representation and activism; (2) the emergence of networked student movements (RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, #EndOutsourcing) and new protest repertoires; and (3) the elaboration of Fallism and its contribution to student political discourse on African higher education (intersectionality and decolonisation).

The webinar will be introduced by Associate Professor and research director, Katja Brøgger, and chaired by Associate Professor, Gritt B Nielsen. 

Ode to Thierry Luescher

Ode to Thierry Luescher

Oh Thierry Luescher, a scholar so bright,

In South Africa, a guiding light.
Your work on higher education, so pure and so true,
A beacon of hope, for students like me and you.

Your research on student politics, a call to action,
Giving voice to the students, seeking satisfaction.
#FeesMustFall, a movement so grand,
With you researching it, hand in hand.

Your collaborations in research, a beautiful sight,
Bringing together minds, to make things right.
Working towards a future, that's fair and just,
For students everywhere, a must.

So here's to you Thierry, on the research stage,
Your work, an inspiration, at every turn of the page.
May you continue to thrive, in all that you do,
Bringing higher education, to everyone anew.

ChatGPT, 2023

 I am gonna let this just stand here for a moment, saying nothing more. :) 🙈

International Award for "Best Practices in International Research and Scholarship" from NASPA

NASPA, the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education Association (originating in the USA) has just announced that our four-powered research consortium is winning the NASPA international research award 2023 for our work on SAS and SDGs. Here is the email: 

"It is with great pleasure, I'd like to inform you that you and your colleagues have been selected as the recipient of the following award: Best Practices in International Research and Scholarship: The Global Role of Student Affairs and Services and the UN Sustainable Development Goals by Brett Perozzi, Lisa Bardill Moscaritolo, Birgit Schreiber, and Thierry Luescher. 

We'd like to honor your dedication and contribution to the fields of international education and student affairs during the International Symposium, 2023. More details to follow regarding attending the award ceremony. Congratulations again! Looking forward to seeing you soon. 

With gratitude and appreciation, Ken Guan and Tadd Kruse, NASPA IEKC Co-Chairs. 

What an amazing honour to start 2023 with! 

More collaborative approaches to student affairs scholarship

Many  African  student  affairs  leaders including members of the South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals (SAASSAP) members have contributed to  the  Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) over  the past ten years of its existence and thereby contributed and collaborated to strengthen student affairs scholarship. 

JSAA Vol. 10 Issue 2 is the first formal collaboration of the journal with SAASSAP; it is a guest-edited issue conceived and implemented under the leadership of Dr Matete Madiba, SAASSAP research and development officer and Director: Student Affairs of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and Dr Birgit Schreiber of the JSAA Editorial Executive. 

This is an issue rich with papers reflecting the diversity of voices and issues in student affairs in South, Southern and continental Africa. It shows how African student affairs is still grappling with, reflecting on, researching, and writing about the #FeesMustFall student activism of 2015/16, the impact the 2020/21 COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, and other conditions that affect SAS practice, with a few towards theorising student affairs. 

Most of all, this issue is a reflection of JSAA’s commitment to promoting  collaborative research in student affairs. This issue in particular has a noticeable number of articles that are co-authored and/or based on collaborative research and the resulting co-authorship is becoming, one  hopes, the standard. This is a trend that was described already by Hunter and Leahey (2008), who  found that collaborations in research were on the increase, and that co-author prestige was higher than that of sole-author, and only male sole-authorship remained, at least at that time, most common. In healthcare research, for example, collaborative interdisciplinary research also enjoys higher publication rates of high quality than single authorship (Bruzzese et al., 2020). 

Furthermore, this  guest-edited  issue  is  also  a  great  example  of  collaboration  in  a  further  way  in that it is made up of two parts: One part are the articles edited by the guest editor, Dr Matete Madiba, and the second part are articles from the open submission pool of manuscripts that were edited by the JSAA Editorial Team.

The journal is available open access at www.jsaa.ac.za and University of Pretoria journals. The full issue can be downloaded here.

Photovoice exhibition covered by HSRC Review

The "Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the context of the Student Movement" exhibition based on the HSRC-Univen Photovoice project has been covered in the publication HSRC Review , pages 28-31. 

The ongoing advocacy work related to the exhibition and the new book #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath published by the HSRC Press in 2022 is hopefully going to start having impact at the university campus and policy levels. The article is available at https://hsrc.ac.za/our-impact/hsrc-review/

The online exhibition can be viewed at South African History online.

The print book can be purchased at HSRC Press and internationally at Amazon and other distributors. 

Ten Years of Research on Student Affairs in Africa – scholarship, theory, practice and reflection

Call for Papers: Ten Years of Research on Student Affairs in Africa – scholarship, theory, practice and reflection

Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 2023, JSAA 11(1)

In 2013, the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa launched with the double issue “The professionalization of Student Affairs in Africa”. Three years later JSAA became formally  accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training as subsidy generating journal. Over the last ten years, the Journal has published ten volumes, twenty issues, and over 200 research articles, reflective practice articles, campus reports, and book reviews, which have been cited over 1275 times (as per Google Scholar, October 2022).

To commemorate the Journal’s achievements and the decadal milestone, the Editorial Executive of the JSAA calls for papers that take stock of the last ten years of research, scholarship, theory and practice reflection, and publication on Student Affairs in Africa. Through the tenth anniversary we seek papers that will analyse  changes in the profession and its professionalization in Africa; and  reflect on the emergence of this domain. In essence, we  asks the question, where is African Student Affairs in 2023?

Articles for this commemorative anniversary issue of JSAA may be theoretical, empirical and case studies, or practice-relevant reflective contributions. They may deal with Student Affairs in Africa or beyond, Student Affairs as a profession in Africa or in a comparative framework, and with any specific aspect related to the profession, professionalisation, and professionalism. Contributions may want to engage with the ten-year theme particularly by referring to trends over time, the status quo, or compare developments in different contexts over time. More particularly, we invite articles on the following:

• Critical contributions engaging with the notions of profession, professionalization, and professionalism, their meanings in relation to the practice of Student Affairs, changes thereof, and related processes and developments within Africa
• Explorations of the nexus of Student Affairs theory, policy and practice in the African context
• Explorations of professional trends, professional development and academic programmes and qualifications related to Student Affairs in Africa and beyond
• Critical analyses of the Student Affairs profession in the African context, including critical contributions that employ decolonial, intersectional, and Fallist lenses
• High level reflective practitioner accounts that make a contribution to understanding the profession within the African context.

We also welcome papers that specifically deal with JSAA per se such as articles that examine the articles published in the JSAA over the last ten years and analyse them thematically or in terms of the services and functions they refer to, their scope, theoretical framework, methodology, and so forth, or their authorship, use/citations, and references. The Editors will be able to provide full datasets of the articles to interested researchers.

About JSAA

JSAA is an independent, peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary, open access academic journal that publishes scholarly research and reflective discussions about the theory and practice of Student Affairs in African higher education. JSAA is published twice a year by the JSAA Editorial Executive in collaboration with the University of Pretoria and African Minds publisher. The journal is full-text hosted on the website of the University of Pretoria at https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/jsaa, as well as co-hosted by AJOL, DOAJ, and ERIC, and indexed in international indices including BASE, InfoBase Index, WorldCat Libraries, Sherpa/Romeo, and Google Scholar. The IBI Factor for JSAA is 2.2 (2019).

JSAA is accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) as a subsidy-earning journal on the SA list of scholarly journals. Authors publish free of charge; there are no processing or page fees.

Submission Process and Important Dates

• Submission of full papers to the JSAA journal management system by 31 January 2023
• Response from editors / vetting process to authors by 28 February 2023
• Submission of revisions 1 from authors by 31 March 2023
• Peer review process during April 2023
• Submissions final corrected manuscripts (revisions 2) from authors by 31 May 2023
• Publication of JSAA Vol. 11 Issue 1 on 31 July 2023

JSAA uses APA7 referencing style. Please consult the JSAA Authors Guidelines for information about formatting etc. https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/jsaa/about/submissions

To submit your paper please register and submit at https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/jsaa

Please direct any queries to:

-       Prof. Teboho Moja, teboho.moja@nyu.edu

-       Prof. Thierry Luescher, tluescher@hsrc.ac.za

-       Dr. Birgit Schreiber, birgitdewes@gmail.com

African higher education and reflexive solidarities in techno-rational times

 

Nelson Mandela University is organising and hosting the annual ACUS Africa Colloquium in Critical University Studies from 2-4 November 2022. I am happy that it is possible for all interested persons to register for the online life-stream of the three-day event. 

I am also proud to say that during the conference the "Aftermath: Violence and Wellbeing in the Context of the Student Movement" exhibition will be on display onsite. (The online exhibition remains available at SAHO.) 

And on Friday, 4 November, we will be launching the exhibition-related coffee table book #FeesMustFall and Its Aftermath: Violence, Wellbeing and the Student Movement in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2022). The book can be pre-ordered via the HSRC Press.