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While the Centre’s primary focus is higher education leadership, management and governance, its research agenda is best captured by the notion of a ‘socially embedded university’, with emphasis on local and global responsiveness to the issues of access, equity and social justice. As such, engagement with the economic and social challenges posed by the apartheid legacy, as well as with the increasing global neo-liberal and ‘digital recolonisation’ pressures, is a key area of enquiry. This entails looking at the following dimensions: broad accessibility (formal access and epistemic access); organisational flexibility; social usefulness or social responsibility, compliance with social justice discourses; economic and cultural responsiveness. Related issues of study include, among other things, institutional and system differentiation, internationalisation and regionalisation, e-learning, ranking systems and institutional culture.
Current Projects
The Black Archive: Reclaiming African Intellectual Histories to Reimagine the Future of Higher Education and society through a post-liberal articulation.
About the Project
Overview:
The Black Archive is a research initiative that excavates, curates, and theorises African intellectual, political, and cultural traditions鈥攑articularly those articulated in Indigenous languages and rhetorical forms鈥攁s epistemic resources for transforming higher education.
Positioned at the intersection of political theory, decolonial critique, and African Studies, the project draws on orature, protest aesthetics, archival texts, and vernacular philosophies to reconstruct African knowledges that challenge the dominance of Euro-modern paradigms within university curricula, governance, and research.
By mobilising materials from thinkers…
Exclusion of female students with disabilities from STEM programmes at an institution of higher education in Zimbabwe: The implications for Sustainable Development Goal 5
About the Project
The project is its infantile stage but will expand to include more African countries which will contribute to the Pan-Africanist engagement which is the Centre鈥檚 mandate.
Overview:
The project is focused on empowering women and girls will disabilities in African higher education through exploring the challenges they encounter in entering STEM programmes and being prepared for STEM related careers.聽聽 In 2025 data will be collected from an institution of higher education which was established to offer STEM programmes in the country (The National 欧美福利100000 of Science and Technology). 聽It is in that regard that it project will start from one African country and further expand to other institutions of higher…
Steering Epistemic Access and Success of historically disadvantaged students in South African universities
About the Project
Overview:
Following the completion of Phase one of the Student Epistemic Access and Success project funded by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in June 2022, AMCHES was successful in securing funding from the National Research Foundation to extend the project to another four universities, under the title聽Steering Epistemic Access and Success of Historically Disadvantaged Students in South African Universities.聽The participating universities are the 欧美福利100000 of KwaZulu-Natal, 欧美福利100000 of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela 欧美福利100000 and the 欧美福利100000 of Fort Hare.
Following Professor Cross鈥檚 passing, Dr. Logan Govender initially assumed leadership before the project transitioned to Professor Thandi Lewin. Dr. Baleni Sibanda, an AMCHES postdoctoral research fellow, serves as the National Project Coordinator. Data collection commenced in 2023, and the project is expected to be concluded in 2025.
Too late yet still quite early? Investigating the experiences of 鈥渙lder鈥� early career academics in South African higher education (funded by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Catalytic Grant - Grant number CPR22/1105)
About the Project
Overview:
Is it possible to be an early career academic while you are relatively 鈥渙lder鈥� and in your 40s or possibly 50s? If yes, what does this look and feel like? In this project, I explore and theorise the often forgotten and overlooked experiences of 鈥渙lder鈥� early career academics in South African higher education. Higher education in South Africa, like its counterparts in the global South (and North), continues to experience massification and ever-increasing participation rates. This has meant that the national department Is it possible to be an early career academic while you are relatively 鈥渙lder鈥� and in your 40s or possibly 50s? If yes, what does this look and feel like? In this project, I explore and theorise the often forgotten and overlooked experiences of 鈥渙lder鈥� early career academics in South African higher education…
Generations of African Scholars (Flagship Project 2020-2025)
About the Project
Overview:
The primary objective of the project is to document the intellectual legacy and contribution of African scholars, intellectuals, leaders and institutions to knowledge production and the higher education discourse, policy and practice in Africa. In this way, the project aims to re-centre and re-position the often-marginalised African voices with the global politics of knowledge for the purposes of transforming the higher education sector in Africa…
Access and Success in Higher Education in South Africa (three projects funded by the Council for Higher Education)
About the Project
Overview:
Steering Student Access and Success in Higher Education
The project sets out to address the following main questions: How do students negotiate their access and success within a diverse university environment? What individual, institutional or collective resources (cultural and/or material) do they resort to in the process? And, how do institutions mediate this process? This entails exploring carefully the following four aspects of the interface of student agency and the university cultural web…