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

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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. 

Student activism, translocality, and social justice: call for papers

I am so proud to be guest-editing a special issue of the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education with Gritt Nielsen. The topic of the special issue is "Student Activism, Translocality, and Social Justice".

Abstract deadline: 15 December 2022

Manuscript deadline: 15 June 2023

Correspondence: Gritt: gbn@edu.au.dk; Thierry: TLuescher@hsrc.ac.za

Submission link; and link to the journal. 

And this is how the topic is described: 

"In many countries and universities, students engage in activities to promote social justice through inclusion, diversity, epistemic freedom and decolonisation, paying renewed attention to intersectionalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality.

In this special issue, we seek to focus on the translocal dimensions of student activism for equality and greater social justice. We understand ‘activism’ quite broadly to include student-led activities - ranging from small-scale mundane initiatives to large-scale protest events - that aim to change everyday life, practices or norms at the university and beyond. Students’ activist engagement is often shaped in and through translocal / transnational / international / global spaces in which geo-political imaginaries, academic theories, actionable knowledge or symbols, hashtags, materiality and people circulate and move across socio-political contexts. Struggles are connected across multiple scales, and partially common worlds and horizons are created.

Furthermore, public debates and political interpretations of students’ engagement for social justice also tend to be shaped in and through translocal spaces. Students’ activism in one country is compared to and understood in light of the political situation elsewhere, giving rise to political pressure or decisions that can restrict or encourage student political engagement in different ways.

This special issue offers an opportunity to explore the multiple ways in which translocal interconnectivities work to shape students’ political engagement to promote social justice within their university and/or society writ large.

There is a growing literature on transnational social movements, albeit literature on student movements tends to focus historically and currently on the national scale and/or on campus level activism. Similarly, while there is a growing literature on the role of the internet and social media in creating and sustaining translocal networks and solidarities in the form of networked social movements, thus facilitating translocal connective political action, literature on internet-age networked student movements such as #FeesMustFall remains scant. Further analyses are also needed of the translocal dimensions of the more subtle forms of students’ everyday activism, including the ways in which negotiations over use of language or particular practices resonate with or are shaped by, for example, wider social movements, international academic literature or public debates.

We invite contributions based on original empirical research that discuss the translocal dimensions of students’ political engagement. This can include, but is not restricted to, analyses of student activism in relation to:

• The role of social media, e.g., hashtag movements and campaigns, that resonate across institutional/national/local contexts
• Questions of epistemic (in)justice and how knowledge/curriculum is negotiated in relation to e.g., national/international/global contexts or standards
• The production of socio-political imaginaries and horizons (e.g., decolonial, anti-racist, anti-wokeist)
• Converging transnational social movements, including Black Lives Matter and #MeToo
• The shaping of policies, reforms, public debates within and across specific contexts.
• The incorporation/negotiation of particular kinds of vocabulary/ phrases/ languages that relate to a wider translocal (e.g. cultural, political, historical) context

Submissions can also engage in conceptual discussions and theorisation of the role of translocal interconnections in student movements moving beyond dichotomies of global-local to concepts like global forms and assemblages, translocal/transnational, networks, diffusion, scale shift, internalization/ externalization, scaling, worlding, resonance. 

The Durban tour: Aftermath exhibition, book launch, colloquium, workshop and project meeting at UKZN

It was a week of great activity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) from 22 to 26 August 2022. Upon the invitation of the Humanities Institute and hosted by the Centre for Create Arts, the HSRC-Univen team of researchers studying the wellbeing and violence in relation to the student movement presented the "Aftermath" exhibition. The exhibition was kindly opened by DVC: Humanities, Prof Nhlanhla Mkhize of UKZN.

It turned out to be a great success. The exhibition was shown on two days in the Shepstone Building and for its opening, we put it up in the Howard College building. On Monday 22 August, Prof Saleem Badat hosted the book launch of #FeesMustFall and its Aftermath: Violence, Wellbeing and the Student Movement in South Africa published by the HSRC Press (2022). The pictures here are from the book launch. It was very engaging. Prof Lebo Moletsane did a beautiful job in her critical appraisal of the book (which we call a 'coffee table book' and she urges us to call a 'visual essay'). The staff and student audience askes good questions and raised critical issues.  I enjoyed doing a reading of the book, I actually literally read most of "Chapter 1: Student wellbeing, to us" to the audience. It is the chapter where we position ourselves and our research with the activists in terms of our commitments and understandings. 

I was glad to find a number of familiar faces among the audience, including the UWC political scientist Lindokuhle Mandyoli. His work in the UWC #FeesWillFall protests, analysing and interpreting it through the lens of Antonio Gramsci's work on hegemony is giving amazing insights. He asked the question, what the role of civil society is in supporting student movements. 

The next day we found ourselves in the same space again, debating the future of the student movement and its impact on higher education at the colloquium organised by the Humanities Institute and Prof Saleem Badat as part of the HSRC event series coming to UKZN. During that time, the exhibition was visited by numerous students and staff members. The colloquium continued until late into the afternoon. Among the presenters were also two freshly baked PhDs from Cambridge, Drs Anye Nyamnjoh and Josh Platzky Miller.  

On Wednesday, Dr Keamo Morwe led a three-hour workshop with student affairs professionals and student consellours from UKZN, hosted by Prof. Ntombifikile Mazibuko, the interim Director, and Dr Saloschini Pillay, the Head of counselling in UKZN's Health Sciences College. 

It was an amazing workshop which started with a session where the UKZN colleagues openly shared their experiences of #FeesMustFall and its aftermath. It was heartbreaking to hear that several of them said that they had NEVER had the chance to actually reflect in the collective of their colleagues on these experiences, which in many cases left their psychological traces. Among the few students who joined the sessions (or must I say gate-crushed :), there was one who mentioned after the first session that this was the first time that he felt the university had a human face. In all his years as a student and activist on campus, he never felt that university staff members cared at all for student wellbeing. It moved Keamo to tears!

Following the first session, we workshopped in small groups the fresh off the press 'student affairs manual' called Restoring Wellbeing after Student Protests: Lessons from #FeesMustFall (HSRC, 2020) which turned out to be a catalyst for difficult conversations. 

Overall, the workshop was designed as a safe space and our colleagues from across UKZN counselling, governance and student leadership development were very appreciative of us. We in turn were just so grateful to have been invited into their space and been given the opportunity to work with them. which turned out to be an amazing collective learning experience for all of us. 

I am incredibly grateful to Dr Keamo Morwe who is my co-principal investigator on the violence and wellbeing project. She has such a beautiful soul, full of energy (never mind her saying "I am tired!", just saying) and a well-trained, sharp mind. I am grateful to Dr Angelina Wilson-Fadiji, who has contributed so much in terms of all her knowledge and research on wellbeing in African educational contexts. Sphelele Khumalo and Thalente Hadebe from the UWC and DUT student groups of photovoice researchers have participated throughout the UKZN events. They have reminded me why I am doing this with their appreciation, commitment, and hope. Together we are pushing the boundaries, advocating for substantive access; access that leads to success where a student can develop the capabilities to achieve their aspirations. I am grateful to Prof Saleem Badat who continues to strike me for his beautiful, razor sharp, critical mind; his ability to cut through a flood of words and pick out that point that was so difficult to articulate. What a privilege to spend a day in his company.

Book launch: African perspectives of university community engagement in secondary cities

The title of the new book edited by Sam, Ntimi, Jesmael and I is very generic as Universities, Society and Development. The book was published by SUN Press, yesterday (2 Aug 2022). The ebook is open access available from my academia.edu site.

What is much more intriguing and tantalizing is actually the subtitle: 

African perspectives of university community engagement in secondary cities

The subtitle raises several questions: What are "African perspectives of university community engagement"? What actually is "university community engagement" to begin with? What modalities of 'engagement' are there? Who engages with whom or what? To what end? What aspect of "university" is involved in this engagement? How does it relate to the core functions of a university, which are teaching and learning, and research? What is meant by community in this phrase Does 'community' extend to businesses, government, public sector organisations, community-based organisations, or what exactly? Conceptually as well as practically, what is involved in these notions?And what are 'secondary cities'? Is there something particularly different and noteworthy about such engagement in so-called secondary cities? What is signaled by this prominent reference to locality? How does it relate to the idea of 'college towns' and the concept of 'anchor institutions' and 'anchoring'?

The book answers these questions in 11 chapters, certainly not conclusively but with great reference to ongoing conceptual work, academic and policy discourse, and most importantly, reflective cases of locally grounded practice. Overall there are conceptual chapters, normative chapters, empirical chapters and a final policy analysis chapter. It was originally conceived as one of the research outputs of the project “Enhancing University Community Engagement at Sol Plaatje University: Matching Institutional Outlook with Regional Absorptive Capacity” that started in 2018.

Today the book was launched in the Higher Education and Development Seminar at the University of the Free State, and on Friday it will be launched at Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley. 

Student mental health focus: Restoring student wellbeing after protests

 Prof Teboho Moja of New York University writes the following about the newly produced 'Student Affairs manual' called Restoring wellbeing after student protests: Lessons from #FeesMustFall and its aftermath:

"The manual ... is a first of its kind and aims at opening a debate on student activism, student wellbeing and their preparation for participation in civil society, and on the role that student affairs and student development plays in this respect. It can serve as a resource for student affairs and services professionals in the field. Although the manual uses narratives from the past as its context, it also provides suggestions on how to remedy the damage caused to students’ wellbeing and provides guidance on how similar situations may be prevented in the future. In the bigger picture, some of the narratives and discussion points in the manual are a call to rethink and reform the values, policies and practices of Student Affairs and Services in South Africa and beyond, calling for both restorative and open-minded approaches to students’ political engagement and wellbeing." 

The manual is freely available to download here and the team of researchers and students involved in creating the knowledge for the manual are glad to provide workshops with Student Affairs practitioners and student leaders on student protesting, governance and student wellbeing. 

Student Activism and the Pandemic: A Global Round-Up

In a first ever collaboration with the amazing Didem Türkoğlu of Kadir Has University in Turkey, I just published the short article: Student Activism and the Pandemic: A Global Round-Up in International Higher Education. Our research shows how student protesting developed over the pandemic years and considers trends and latest developments.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to far-reaching changes in higher education globally, yet student activism continued to be a force to be reckoned with. Key concerns and commitments remained student funding; equality, social justice, and antidiscrimination; political freedoms and democracy; and gender equality. The single biggest cause of protests was, however, the pandemic itself. Recent additions to the protest agenda include climate change, academic freedom, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The article is available at academia and here.

It is a follow up article on the global round-up I published with Phil Altbach in the 2020 Spring Issue termed "Another Student Revolution?" also published in IHE. At the time I wrote the following blog entry: Are-we-witnessing-student-revolution?