On 11 December 2025, I was proud to read the citation for and graduate my friend, research buddy, and former colleague, Taabo Mugume, who graduated with his PhD in Higher Education Studies at the University of the Free State, proudly having been supervised by me. 

Dr Taabo Mugume

Taabo Mugume was born on 23 February 1982 in Mbale, Uganda, where he completed his schooling at Kira Secondary School in 2000. After moving to South Africa, he attained a B.Admin (cum laude) in 2012, B.Admin Honours in 2013 and M.Admin (Political Studies; cum laude) in 2015 from the University of the Western Cape. I proudly was his supervisor for the M.Admin at UWC.

In 2017, he completed a PGDip in Higher Education (with distinction) at the University of the Free State (UFS) together with me. Both of us graduated with distinction having worked together at DIRAP while doing the PGDip at the same time. 

His career started as Assistant Lecturer at UWC in 2014. He joined the UFS in 2015 as researcher in DIRAP, working for me while I was Assistant Director there, and by December 2025 he had become the Director: Monitoring and Institutional Research - which means, he had taken the post of the person who was my line manager when I was at the UFS. What achievement for Taabo; what pride for me.

Taabo, or rather: Dr Mugume, was awarded his PhD with his thesis titled: 

Creative Governance and University Response to Student Protest Demands to Decolonise the Curriculum: A South African Case Study

In that study, Taabo investigates how a South African university’s governance structures responded to #MustFall student demands to decolonise the curriculum between 2015 and 2020. Using qualitative case study methods, including interviews with university leaders, academics, and student representatives, Mugume analyses three intra-institutional cases: the institution-wide language policy review and curriculum change processes in two faculties. 

The study introduces and applies an adapted “Creative Governance for Curriculum Decolonisation” framework, showing how creative practices, such as a university assembly for consensus-building and inter-departmental decolonisation forums, enhanced responsiveness to student demands. It highlights governance self-assessment tools like the Council Score Card as mechanisms for improvement and proposes the creative governance framework as an analytical and practical tool to strengthen inclusive and responsive university governance in South Africa.
 

Almost there! A glimps behind the scenes of the forthcoming book...

Anye and I drafted a preface for the forthcoming book:

#FeesMustFall ten years on

which is co-edited by Anye Nyamnjoh, Thierry Luescher, Josh Platzky-Miller, Keamo Morwe and Simamkele Dlakavu, to be published in 2026 by Mandela University Press. The final version of the Preface, which still needs to be reviewed, amended and approved by the other three editors, will eventually become the Preface of the book. Here is a glimpse behind the scenes of the forthcoming book.

PS. I love the picture from 2015 of the school kids urging the university students to "keep fighting". I wonder where they are now. Ten years on... they have hopefully long joined higher education or gained some other way a vocational qualification, and started their own businesses or found great jobs. (PPS. If you know who took this picture or who is in it, please let me know.)

Draft Preface

This book began, as many books about social movements do, not with quiet scholarly contemplation or an accumulation of data and ideas, but with questions and commitments that refused to settle.

Ten years after the South African student spring of 2015–16, questions lingered like: What has been the impact of this student generation’s sacrifices? What has changed? And perhaps most pressingly: what has not? How do we keep the memory alive? How do we introduce a new generation of students and activists— and remind scholars, academic leaders, policy makers and the public— to the ideas and politics of that time? 

Between 2015 and 2017, South African higher education was engulfed by a wave of student protests that travelled across campuses and beyond them, carrying hashtags as names that became both slogans and archives: #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, #EndOutsourcing, #PatriarchyMustFall. These were not only movements and campaigns about fees, statues and policies. They were moments in which the university itself — its histories, cultures, promises, and manifestations— were profoundly contested and reframed as violences, exclusions, and trauma. Students gave language to what many had long felt but struggled to name: that the post-apartheid university remained tethered to coloniality, racial capitalism, patriarchy, and epistemic hierarchy. Studying in the post-apartheid university was experienced as ‘black pain’. And this crisis was neither abstract nor episodic; it was personal and structural.

As the tenth anniversary approached, organising a commemorative event felt insufficient.. We were not interested in toasting to the student struggles or nostalgically domesticating what had been deeply disruptive and immensely generative. We wanted to contribute to a critical reckoning: a collective effort to critically think through the movement and its various manifestations— its histories, meanings; its impact, legacy and significance. 

The first seeds for this book were planted in conversation and collaboration across institutions and networks of scholars, practitioners, and former activists who had lived through the protests in different roles. A colloquium convened under the broad rubric of rupture and decolonisation created a space to revisit the moment not as a closed chapter but as an unfinished process. From these exchanges of ideas and research came the call for contributions that anchored this book. 

We invited scholars, higher education practitioners, former student leaders and activists to reflect on the 2015–16 moment and its aftermath. We deliberately opened up the space for different genres and methods. Research articles sit alongside personal narratives, visual essays, and reflective accounts. In this way, the book mirrors the movement itself: polyphonic, contested, networked, and internally differentiated. The knowledge produced in and about the movement both reflects and challenges the confines of conventional academic form.

Some contributors write with analytic distance, producing rigorous empirical and policy analyses. Others draw on the immediacy of lived experience.. Some trace policy trajectories and institutional reforms while others recall solidarity, care and trauma. Together, these contributions render the student movement as a complex social formation: uneven, contradictory, generative and creative.

Historically, this volume reflects on a moment when the language of “transformation,” dominant in post-1994 higher education policy, had lost much of its critical purchase. . The students’ insistence on  “decolonisation” signalled deep dissatisfaction with compromise, incremental reform and managerial rationale. Decolonisation named new and deeper questions: Who belongs in the university? Who does the university belong to? Who and what is missing from the canons and corridors of the university? Who pays and who benefits? Decolonisation brought new concepts into the South African academic discourse and linked old and new demands: like epistemic justice and material redress. In unsettling the post-apartheid moral grammar of the public university, the movement exposed tensions at the heart of the post-apartheid elite compact.

Intellectually, the movement drew on a wide repertoire, including most prominently its “official” three ideological pillars, i.e., Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism, and Black Radical Feminism, alongside South African Charterism, queer theory, decolonial thought, Marxism, labour struggles, and longstanding traditions of student and worker solidarity.  These traditions did not always cohere comfortably. Campus-based movements and the broad national campaigns were at once local and translocal, digitally networked and physically embodied, rooted in specific positionalities and yet resonant far beyond them. The #MustFall ideas thus travelled across sectors, borders, and domains with the university as the nuclear site where broader social conflicts crystallised.

If the 2015-16 student movement opened possibilities, it also exposed its limits: gains were uneven and incomplete; institutions adapted; securitisation intensified; dissent was suppressed; debate was polarised; internal fissures emerged; fatigue and trauma setting in. 

The question of legacy, impact, and significance is therefore not simple. Yet answers may lie in looking back afresh, in critically interrogating the present, and in asking what political and intellectual imaginaries the movement made possible over the past decade — and what they might still make possible.  This book is the space we created for questions to be asked, probed, and perhaps answered. If it achieves anything, we hope it does so in refusing both celebration and condemnation, and in continuing the work of understanding as part of the work of social change.

How do to start, operate, and sustain a high-quality diamond open access journal in Africa: Lessons from JSAA

The landscape of academic publishing in Africa remains dominated by problematic models; high subscription fees, limited visibility and reach, and highly limited access, on the one side; and in some cases, predatory platforms that mis-use the “open access” label and charge high article processing fees (APCs) for (often) low-quality, irrelevant and unscientific outputs As researchers and scholars committed to the academic project and the public good, we must ask: How can we build platforms that are openly accessible to all — free to publish in, free to read — and yet uphold high scholarly standards? The experience of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) offers a compelling, pragmatic answer.

For the question, how to start, operate, and sustain a high-quality diamond open access journal in Africa, the Journal of Student Affaires in Africa (JSAA) can offer some humble lessons. For the JSAA Executive, Editorial Board, reviewers and supporters, JSAA has put together a "Operational Manual" that includes a broad range of lessons including a financial plan. 

Why we need Diamond Open Access (DOA) in Africa

JSAA was founded with the mission to professionalise and support student affairs across African higher-education institutions, to give voice to research on the student experience, the theory and practice of student affairs, and topical matters like student development support, student advising, leadership development, student politics and institutional governance, residence life, diversity, equity and inclusivity programmes, and support for universal access, among other things; these are areas rarely prioritized in mainstream journals. As such, its founding purpose was rooted in social relevance and academic justice.

Launch with Purpose, Collaboration and Institutional Anchoring

A DOA journal must begin with clarity of mission and purpose. JSAA was anchored within supportive academic institutions, which provided legitimacy, infrastructural support, and institutional buy-in. Equally important was the forging of partnerships beyond a single institution — reaching into other universities across Africa, and drawing on a network of scholars, practitioners, and funders. This collaborative foundation helps diversify authorship, editorial oversight, and readership, and guards against dominance by a narrow group of institutions or scholars.

For a new journal: start small but ambitiously. Define a mission that reflects real needs in African higher education (e.g. student affairs, language policy, access, equity). Seek institutional hosts willing to commit minimal resources (web hosting, institutional support, endorsement), and begin building a network of interested scholars, reviewers, and potential funders.

Operate with Rigour, Transparency, and Inclusion

Sustainability of scholarly quality depends on robust editorial governance. JSAA’s editorial and operational guidelines — including transparent peer review mechanisms, ethical standards, conflict-of-interest policies — ensure integrity and credibility. Double-blind peer review and the inclusion of diverse reviewers from across Africa (and beyond) uphold scholarly standards while preventing regional or institutional bias.

In addition, JSAA embodies an inclusive and decolonial ethos: promoting multilingualism (e.g. abstracts in English + African languages where possible), encouraging authorship from underrepresented regions and groups, and ensuring that institutional affiliation (of editors, reviewers and authors) does not skew representation. Such practices help democratize knowledge in African higher education.

For a new journal, it is critical to draft a launch plan, a business plan and operational manual from the onset: define roles (editorial board, reviewers, copy-editing, production), peer-review policy, ethical guidelines, a financial sustainability plan and commitment to open access without charges to authors or readers.

Sustain the Diamond Model: Mixed Funding, Institutional Support, and Community Orientation

One of the biggest challenges for DOA journals is sustainability. Charging author fees (APCs) or reader fees undermines the “diamond” commitment; but how then to cover costs — hosting, production, editorial time? JSAA overcomes this through mixed funding strategies: institutional support, small grants, sponsorships of themed issues, and voluntary/pro bono editorial contribution.

Importantly, the journal treats its editorial and review community as a Community of Practice — not just anonymous gate-keepers, but active, recognized contributors to student-affairs scholarship. Regular communication, recognition (e.g. editorial board roles, certificates, acknowledgments), and a shared sense of mission help build loyalty and long-term commitment.

For any aspiring DOA journal: develop a sustainability plan that draws on multiple, modest income streams rather than relying on a single source. Build a community ethos: treat contributors as collaborators, not as unpaid labour.

Extend Impact: From Journal to Ecosystem

JSAA does not stop at publishing articles. Over time, it has grown into a broader intellectual and professional network — a space for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in student affairs to collaborate, exchange ideas, and influence institutional and national policy. This bridging between research, practice, and policy magnifies impact.

A journal that remains narrowly academic risks marginalization. But one that nurtures a living network, translates research into practice — through workshops, community-of-practice events, training modules — becomes a catalyst for change.

Conclusion: What it Takes — and What Is Possible

Starting a high-quality, diamond open access journal in Africa is not easy. It requires courage, vision, disciplined governance, collaborative networks, modest but steady resources, and a deep commitment to scholarly quality, academic equity and academic and societal relevance.

But as JSAA’s experience shows, it is possible, even sustainable — and deeply impactful. By anchoring a journal in purpose, dedicating resources to rigorous but fair editorial processes, and building community rather than profit, we can create spaces where African knowledge circulates freely — enriching our universities, informing policy, and building capacity across the continent.

If you are thinking of starting such a journal — do it! With commitment, solidarity, and careful planning, you could help shape the future of African scholarly publishing — one open access article at a time.

JSAA Community of Practice - Research on Student Affairs in Africa - Editors Workshop

With the financial support of EIFL, the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) has been able to bolster its fledgling community of practice and hold a workshop with the 'core' COP members, i.e. the JSAA editorial board.

Especially encouraging is that several new editors have been on-boarded through this workshop. 

Transformation remains on the top agenda of SA public universities - but what is transformation?

It was my great honour to be invited, by the fabulous Dr Bernadette Johnson, to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Transformation Community of Practice (COP) retreat on Friday, 7 November. At the meeting I became Fidel Castro... in the way he was (amongst many other things) famous for speaking for hours and hours. Well, in my case it was just one hour, but it went by in a flash. My dear friend and former colleague, Dr Bongiwe Mncwango was meant to join me but she became inundated with too much work and so I presented on my own, insights from and reflections on the 2023 "State of Transformation in South Africa's Public Universities" report. Assembled on the call of Dr Bernie Johnson were the chairs of transformation committees across Wits faculties and divisions, as well as champions of equity and inclusion from a number of Wits offices. The COP retreat was opened by Wits DVC Prof. Garth Stevensen, who set the tone by putting the present transformation moment into the history of transformation of the (European) university type and its parallels in South Africa, and many aspects of the uniqueness of SA public universities, particularly their colonial and apartheid origins, and the need for transforming the system and its institutions with the dawn of a new democratic era in 1994. It was closes by the brilliant intellectual (and very engaging and funny) Prof Mlamuli Hlatshwayo from the University of Johannesburg. The TOC Report I presented is freely available. Executive Summary and Full Report are available here.

Another milestone for the forthcoming book: #FeesMustFall - Ten Years On

In 2025-26 we commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the South African student movement of 2015-16, known by campaigns, campus movements and formations like #FeesMustFall, #EndOutsourcing, #RhodesMustFall, #OpenStellenbosch, #PatriarchyMustFall, #RUReferenceList. 

Starting from the end of 2015, a project started to create a number of archives on the movement, and in 2022 Dr Anye Nyamnjoh and I initiated a project specifically to provide a platform for a critical reflection on the history, significance, and legacy of the South African student movement. This started in 2023 with a national colloquium on the movement (see blog entry here). After this, a proposal and call for papers was developed for a book with an editorial team that included a broad spectrum of scholar-activists from different backgrounds. 

Now this process is gradually coming to a close. The Mandela University Press received the full manuscript of the book a month ago - and the book is now under review. Of course, the editors and the many authors and co-author teams are excitedly waiting for the outcome of the review and the process of publishing this important book to continue. 

If all goes well, the first book launches will be held before the end of the year and continue throughout 2026 - across South Africa and possibly also in major African, Global South and Global North centres of activism, higher education, and engaged scholarship. We are excited!

Rethinking higher education: Public and private synergies for student success in Africa

The July 2025 issue of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa arrives at a pivotal time in the discussions around higher education and student success in South Africa and on the continent. It comes also in the context of almost seismic global disruptions (and we are thinking here of AI, geo-political madness and climate change-related conflicts, combined with the ongoing structural challenges within African post-school education systems. This compels us to ask hard but essential questions: What kind of higher education systems do we need to serve our students and our societies better? And critically, can we afford to ignore the growing role of private higher education in that future?

The JSAA feature article is feathered by Ahmed Bawa and Linda Meyer, ‘Becoming more private: Broadening the base of South African higher education’. It courageously interrogates the long-standing public-private divide in the South African higher education sector and explores how declining government funding, siloed and ill-articulated institutions, and systemic socio-political inequality make the emboldened participation of private higher education not only viable but inevitable. A truly functional and future-oriented system must enable coordination, collaboration, and shared responsibility between all HE actors, public and private alike, toward a unified national learning agenda (and extending this into all Africa).

The rest of the issue builds on this theme of rethinking structures and support for student success across African higher education. There are articles on a health and wellness intervention programme; peer mentoring; the role of residence advisors in student academic success; on first-year student belonging; on counselling; on student activism, climate action and other student extracurricular activities and on managing an extended orientation programme in the context of COVID-19. The book review by Dr Sibeso Lisulo, reflects on Widening university access and participation in the Global South: Using the Zambian context to inform other developing countries by Edward Mboyonga. According to Lisulo, the book offers both case-based insights and transferable strategies for inclusion and equity that higher education leaders across the continent would do well to consider. 

As this issue illustrates, student success is not merely a matter of programme design, it is a systemic concern. This invites us to examine the assumptions, architectures, and power dynamics that shape our institutions. Whether we are talking about health, belonging, leadership, activism, or orientation, we must look not just at what we do within universities, but how our systems are organised, and how public and private actors can align for the broader public good. This alignment will necessarily raise questions about purpose, equity, access, and what kind of higher education architecture we need for a just and thriving Africa.

Rethinking higher education in Africa thus requires us to think across several levels or units of analysis – from the micro, individual level of student experience and student success, to support for different groups of students and rethinking the roles of residences, for example, in the academic and social engagement of students. It includes the meso level of institutional diversity and complementarity, and at the macro level, the purpose of higher education in Africa. We started this editorial with reference to the growing polarisation we see in the world – from “geopolitical madness” to conflicts around migration and increasing climate-change-related conflicts. Universities in Africa have to create transformative leaders (with the values, knowledges, attitudes, skills and networks) to respond to the fast-changing context and create peaceful, prosperous and equitable societies. Contributing to this as student affairs professionals, scholars and researchers, gives meaning to our work. And if our institutions fail to deliver on the promise of freedom, peace and prosperity, then they might as well be trade schools.

Birgit, Thierry and Teboho

This is a shortened version of the latest editorial in JSAA. The full editorial can be found at:

Schreiber, B., Luescher, T. M., & Moja, T. (2025). Rethinking higher education: Public and private synergies for student success in Africa. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 13(1), v–vii. DOI: 10.24085/jsaa.v13i1.6227 

Reimagining the African University of the future - Thought-leader interviews

Mark Paterson and I just concluded a series of over 40 brief articles in University World News Africa based on interviews with African higher education thought-leaders. The articles highlight key ideas and innovative practices in African higher education that anticipate the 'future African university' today. They engage with current debates in African higher education such as the growing place and use of African languages in higher education (as against colonial languages); African indigenous knowledge systems and epistemologies; curricular reforms and changes in the delivery of higher education; the impact of massification on a range of matters like university funding, student and staff complements, infrastructure, diversity of institutions and differentiation; and the increasing emphasis on 'tertiary TVET', professional training and practical skills, and so forth. 

The thought-leaders were carefully chosen to include a wide range of scholars, professionals, youth leaders, and grant-makers that are deeply and reflectively involved in the development of universities across the continent. They include: 

Goolam Mohamedbhai, Mogobe Ramose, Reitumetse Mabokela, Rekgotsofetse Chikane, Dzul Razak, Catherine Odora Hoppers, Neil Turok, Adam Habib, Madeleine Arnot, Paul Zeleza, Tade Aina, Lihle Ngcobozi, Rajesh Tandon, Claudia Frittelli, Peter Materu, Birgit Schreiber, William Mpofu, Saleem Badat, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Laura Czerniewicz, Issa Shivji, Nelson Masanche Nkhoma, Cheryl de la Rey, Doyin Atewologun, Tshilidzi Marwala, Ndungu Kahihu, Patrício Langa, Teboho Moja, Chris Bradford, Fred Swaniker, Shanen Ganapathee, Ernest Aryeetey, Yunus Ballim, Achille Mbembe, David Awuah, Thoko Mayekiso, and Fikile Vilakazi. 

In the choice of this illustrious group of thought-leaders, the project team of The Imprint of Education (TIE) project of the Human Sciences Research Council took care to try and balance the views by adding selection criteria (other than the ones above) to also ensure gender, age, region, and broad expertise. In addition to the UWN articles, some of the (edited and approved) transcripts of the interviews are also published on the TIE website. Maybe I should mention that it wasn't only I who did interviews but a whole range of TIE project collaborators, including: Catherine Odora Hoppers, Ibrahim Oanda, Relebohile Moletsane, David Everatt, Crain Soudien, James Otieno Jowi, Sharlene Swartz, Krish Chetty, Alude Mahali, Angelique Wildschut and Vuyiswa Mathambo.

After the conclusion of the series, the second big step now is the publication of the book "Rupture and innovation in the African university", which I co-authored over the last 16 months with Vuyiswa Mathambo, Angelique Wildschut and Crain Soudien. It is due to be published by AISA Press (the Africa Institute of South Africa Press), which is an imprint of the HSRC Press. We hope it will also be co-published with CODESRIA Press which would then be the leading house for the French version of the book. 

Creating a sustainable diamond open access future for African scholarly journals

 The Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA), of which I am a founder and editorial executive, has received a substantial development grant to support its decadelong history as diamond open access journal into the future. 

The grant-maker is EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries), which is a not-for-profit organisation based in Vilnius, Lithuania, that works with libraries and journals to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. JSAA shares EIFL's vision of "a world in which all people have the knowledge they need to achieve their full potential". 

EIFL has provided JSAA with funding to hold its first ever in-person full editorial team workshop; build capacity and tools (such as an editorial manual and a financial sustainability plan); renew its editorial team and operationalise the community of practice in student affairs research that JSAA launched in 2022. The  grant-holder is JSAA's long-term project partner and publisher, African Minds.

In March 2025, the JSAA editors held an editorial summit and workshop in the historic town of Porto (Portugal). The venue was chosen among several options (Zanzibar, Mauritius, South Africa, Morocco and Portugal) because it turned out to be more accessible and less costly for the editors who come from South Africa, Germany, USA, Ethiopia, and the UK. Nonetheless, parts of the workshop was held hybrid to enable a full participation including editors, who for various reasons were not able to join in person (several last-minute).

The five-day editorial summit/workshop focused on (1) discussing the financial sustainability plan; (2) discussing the operationalisation of (a) the community of practice and (b) the JSAA awards; (3)  discussing the renewal of the editorial board and international editorial advisory board; and (4) developing a draft operational manual for JSAA. In addition and somewhat unexpectedly, the three Editorial Executives present in person at the summit also developed (5) a new concept paper on ways to enhance JSAA's contribution to the professionalisation of student affairs with extensive capacity building work. This, they included in their Yidan Prize application. As part of the context: On the encouragement of some of the most outstanding higher education and student affairs scholars and professionals world-wide and particularly in Africa, Prof Moja, Prof Schreiber and I have applied for the educational development prize given annually by the Yidan Prize committee.

The draft operational manual that the summit produced includes a detailed outline of the procedures, some automated and some manual involved in producing JSAA. This Operational Manual will be the guide to review and renew the JSAA website and serve as training tool and reference manual for new and existing section editors, editorial executives, and journal managers. Once complete, the operational Manual will include sections on:

1. Manuscript Submission Management
2. Editorial Review and Assignment
3. Peer Review Coordination
4. Decision Making
5. Manuscript Revision Management
6. Copy Editing
7. Formatting and Layout
8. Proofreading
10. Marketing and Promotion
11. Ethical Oversight, Plagiarism and AI
12. Administrative Tasks
13. Quality Control, and Improvement
14. Mentorship 

This will be drawing on, and update, the present author guidelines for submission and publishing, but dealing with it from the perspective of editors of the journal. 

New issue published: JSAA 12(2): Advancing Student Success

This is the second guest-edited issue in partnership with the South African Association of Senior Student Affairs Professionals (SAASSAP), led by guest editors Drs Neo Pule, Irene Mohasoa,  and  Prof.  Matete  Madiba.  

The  title  of  this  issue,  ‘Advancing  Student  Success  in  Higher  Education  through  the  Scholarship  of  Integration’, emphasises the importance of scholarship. For student affairs scholarship  in  Africa to be  successful  we  require  a  conducive  ecosystem  that  advances knowledge creation and facilitates the publishing process. Many factors within and beyond academe enable or hinder knowledge production. 

Enjoy the read! Thierry

Advancing Critical University Studies in Africa - Methodology Academy: Learning 'World Cafe'

The Advancing Critical University Studies (ACUS) Africa Conference is an annual inter-institutional conference and training event. This year it was structured as a conference incorporating a methodology academy for emerging scholars in critical university studies with add-on workshop-based training in a participatory and emancipatory methodology (World Cafe). 

Overall, the intended learning outcome was to strengthen the critical and theoretical thinking of (emerging and early career researcher) EECR  participants about African higher education and universities in Africa. Researchers and academics from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), University of Venda, Nelson Mandela University, and Makerere University, conceived and facilitated an EECR World Café research methods academy that ran in conjunction with the ACUS Africa Conference with the outcome to give participants a thorough conceptual, methodological and practical introduction to the World Café methodology. 

For the HSRC, participation was conceived primarily in terms of the training academy for emerging African scholars working on higher education. 

Participation in the World Café EECRA ran as part of the conference sessions which HSRC participants and other participants were a part of and attendance of the academy required an additional sign-up and commitment. Thus, the methodology academy ran specifically for the African EECR attending, in addition to the theoretical and thematic conference papers and discussion. Attendance was entirely free of charge, and for the first time, it was conducted in hybrid format (online and offline).

From the HSRC EEE in particular, the programme included the following panelllists: 

• Prof. Thierry Luescher and Dr Keamogetse Morwe co-facilitated the academy workshops in which over 140 EECR participated both online and in-place
• Leya Mgebisa and Zimingonaphakade Sigenu co-facilitated in place the World Café research methodology and hosted feedback sessions during the course of the workshop
• Zimingonaphakade Sigenu presented a paper on the isiXhosa intellectual archive and insights for contemporary African universities

The broader make-up of participants comprised around 150 emerging and early career researchers from Makerere University, specifically those who are completing their Masters and PhD studies in the East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development as well as early career and emerging scholars from a number of institutions in Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Africa. 

The participation was characterised by active engagements both in-place and on-site with the emerging scholars participating in a practical exercise of the World Café methodology with some of them being table hosts (data collectors) and study participants addressing the questions, "What are some of the persistent inequities and challenges that universities in Africa face in becoming Afrocentric universities?" and "What practical steps can we pursue towards creating an Afrocentric university?"

Like in previous years, the Academy was particularly problem and project-oriented, with a practical component of actually participating in the design and operation of a research project using World Cafe. 

The participation also included the participants actively reflecting and feeding back on the methodology and experience of practically implementing it as well as carving out ways in which the methodology can be used for decolonial and emancipatory research and ways to incorporate indigenous practices within the methodology to make it better suited for the African context.

The Academy ran from 16 to 18 October 2024. 

The four-dimensional professor

 In a complex and changing academic context, early career academics must be aware of the many dimensions that academic work involves. In whatever discipline or field you are building your career, there are global challenges that cannot be ignored, alongside global efforts to address these challenges, such as the UN SDGs. We are in the midst of the threat of climate change wreaking havoc across the Global South, and just survived one of the most deadly global pandemics in human history; there are massive technological advancement and an incisive digital transformation underway with AI offering huge opportunities as well as challenges and threats. In the midst of this, academic work must provide equitable quality education and contribute to deep societal transformation, especially in post-colonial and post-conflict societies in the Global South. In short: we need a new generation of academics who can provide transformative leadership across the multiple functions of academic work; academic game-changers.

What are those dimensions?

Among the top-of-mind academic work functions are:

• Teaching & Advising
• Community engagement
• Development & support
• Research & knowledge production
• Reflective practice
• Academic citizenship

In the dimension of research, knowledge production and reflective practice (and its interrelation with community engagement, as well as teaching, advising and academic citizenship,) developing an identity as researcher-academic is becoming increasingly important. My argument is that the conception of the 'teacher-academic' of previous centuries has given way to that of the 'researcher-academic' in the last fifty years or so, increasingly ubiquitously, not anymore in the exception of the 'star research professor' but it is the new normal.

In this new normal, the 'researcher-academic' is a professor who takes the leap into the 'fourth dimension' - leading in knowledge creation, policy influence, partnerships, transformation and sustainability. 

This transformation of the academic work and the workplace, there are naturally tensions. In the 'fourth dimension' - determining knowledge production - the three-dimensional professor of old becomes a digitally-enhanced, natural and artificial intelligence-connected, multiverse being; but tensions abound. I have not even reflected on many of them related to the digital and AI connection yet, but rather on some of the 'old' vs. 'new' tensions, like at the very basic level, of taking the leap from scholar to researcher; tensions between type 1 and type 2 knowledges; collaboration (with other human and machine colleagues) or working in the hermetically, and so forth.

The fourth dimension is also the one where dreams become reality in ways that a 20th century steel and mortar generation still feels hard to grapple with; the creation of international consortia, policy laboratories, global research studios, and so forth, has become cost-neutral. The most precious resource remains time (money has always been a distraction)! 

And like MS and others have long discovered, the true value is not in owning the application, but developing and maintaining the platform. Hence, a key issue - undervalued but of paramount importance - is to be in the centre of the knowledge process as owner and editor of knowledge platforms, like scholarly journals.

I'll leave this here; many of these thoughts are ready for building up, critiquing, developing. I'll love to hear from you. 

(A detailed version of this discourse was delivered by me as keynote at the Research Indaba, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, 11 October 2024.)

Towards a new entrepreneurial student activism

The month of June is knows in South Africa as "Youth Month" in extension of Youth Day which is celebrated on 16 June every year. The South African youth day reminds of the protests of black school learners in Soweto and other parts of the country against the imposition of Afrikaans as language of tuition in black schools. With these protests, known as the Soweto Uprising, the year 1976 marks a turning point in the history of the liberation struggle in South Africa. After over a decade of repression. Post-1959, that is, following the Sharpeville  and Langa Massacres where in a peaceful protest march against pass laws over sixty black civilians were killed brutally by the white police, an entire generation of freedom fighters in South Africa were incarcerated by the Apartheid regime, many liberation organisations banned, and the remaining leadership of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the Communist Party of South Africa, and others fled into exile. It was the trade union movement and the student movement - particularly the SA Students Organisation founded by Steve Biko and others - that revived the struggle in the early 1970s. The latter elaborated their political philosophy of Black Consciousness and thus inspired a new generation of young black South Africans to resist their apartheid classification, marginalisation, exploitation and exclusion. 

The University of Venda, under the leadership of the Department of Youth in Development and particularly my good friend and colleague, Dr Keamo Morwe, hosted the 2024 Youth Month Celebrations  on 17 June (one day after the actual youth day) with panel and plenary discussions, debates, and a luncheon. I was invited as guest speaker and guest panelist. 

In my public lecture to the assembled student and staff body I reflected on 'entrepreneurial student activism' as a form of activism that builds bridges between campus and community, student life and livelihoods, political agency and economic freedom. In this speech I drew on my experiences over twenty years ago as a student vice-president at the University of Cape Town, where as an SRC, we adopted a student entrepreneurship policy and developed several structures to support student entrepreneurship. These included "Student Enterprises" as a holding company for student-run businesses on campus, including the student bookshop; the "Student Research Institute" which provided training to students and offered student-led research consultancy to campus and community clients; as well as other student-run social enterprises like "SHAWCO and RAG", "Ufundo" and so forth. 

The Univen staff journalists summarised my lecture in their university magazine as follows:

"In his lecture, Prof Luescher explored the contemporary realities faced by today’s youth, including their struggles and triumphs. He also shed light on the unique perspectives and innovative solutions that young people bring to society. 

His talk sparked a lively and dynamic discussion among the students, who were inspired to reflect on the vital role of youth in shaping the future of our communities. 

Prof Luescher also stressed the critical role that young people play in driving leadership and entrepreneur-ship. In his public lecture, he underscored the importance of empowering youth to take on leadership roles and explore entrepreneurial opportunities, noting that their unique perspectives and innovative ideas can spur economic growth and promote social change."

I also reflected on the various ways in which student entrepreneurship was being supported nationally by Universities South Africa (USAf) and at the University of Venda. This led me to recite a 'found poem' called "Towards a student entrepreneurial training ground" to conclude my talk (see below).

Because Youth Day is all about student activism, Keamo and I brought the "Aftermath of #FeesMustFall" to Univen five years after we conducted our research there with students in 2019. While none of the original student participants in the Univen Photovoice project were available, it was amazing that there were former student activists at the Youth Day celebration who are depicted in the book "#FeesMustFall and its Aftermath" and we were extremely pleased to be able to gift them a copy of the book and hear their story of the photo and protests. 

Towards a student entrepreneurial training ground

I found this poem when I was reading the USAf Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) programme, the national initiative for student entrepreneurship. I call it "Towards a student entrepreneurial training ground". It goes like this: 

The context: graduate and youth unemployment 
The resources: here at university
The goals: create enterprises, wealth and jobs

* * * 

Instilling the mind of the entrepreneur
with relevant knowledge, 
transferable skills 
financial literacy and
business principles
In every discipline, within and across.

Developing into entrepreneurial universities
With a supportive environment
Adopting and adapting 
Strategies and projects
through innovation and support.

* * * 

Four Cs throughout:
Concept and Competence 
Connections and Courage.

Concept: What will we do? What is the plan? How can we offer value?
Competence: Who knows what? What can we do? And what we need to learn?
Connections asks: Who’s who? Who does what? Who is our network and client?
Courage boldly moves ahead for: Why not now? Let’s get it done! Let’s persevere in struggle.

* * *

Academics and student affairs
embedding entrepreneurship 
in curriculum and co-curriculum
in pedagogies, methodologies, 
epistemologies, and ontologies
relevant to our context. 

Economically active
Taking ownership
to implement initiatives. 
to start a career here 
and generate income.

During and after campus
ending student poverty 
defeating unemployment 
crating livelihoods
as students and graduate entrepreneurs. 

T Luescher 2024