Feminist decoloniality as care in higher education

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 FEMDAC is composed of women from the Global South and from the African Diaspora. For Black women living in the USA, we recognise our African roots and demarcate our commitments to Black women globally and the project of decolonisation. Thus, we utilise the concept of “in and of” the Global South.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Assata Zerai

ASSATA ZERAI is a decolonial feminist scholar, whose research deploys Black feminist research methodologies to analyse achieving inclusion in complex organisations, just access to information and communications technologies, novel contributions of BIPOC women’s scholarship transnationally, and structural impediments to maternal and child health. She has published five books and numerous articles spanning these topics. While serving as Fulbright-Hays scholar in 2023, she is currently writing her sixth book, a monograph, Black Feminist Interventions in Decolonizing the Westernized University (under contract with Rowman and Littlefield, Lexington Books). Email: [email protected]

Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela

REITUMETSE OBAKENG MABOKELA is the Associate Chancellor and Vice-Provost for International Affairs & Global Strategy and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BA in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Master’s in Labor & Industrial Relations and a PhD in Educational Policy Studies, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A former Fulbright New Century Scholar, as well as a Fulbright International Education Administrators programme participant in France, her research seeks to understand experiences of marginalised populations and aims to inform and influence institutional policies that affect these groups within institutions of higher education. Her research centres or has centred on the examination of three interrelated themes: organisational change and organisational culture in higher education; gender in higher education; and higher education in transitional societies. Email: [email protected]

Ronelle Carolissen

RONELLE CAROLISSEN is a clinical psychologist and full Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is a National Research Foundation-rated researcher. Her research expertise and publications explore feminist decolonial pedagogies and critical community psychology perspectives on equity in general, and youth citizenship in higher education contexts. She is a Fulbright research scholar alumnus (2021–2022) and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Saajidha Sader

SAAJIDHA SADER, who identifies as a decolonial feminist activist scholar, is a lecturer in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her activism, teaching and research focus on decoloniality, social justice and education broadly and more specifically on decoloniality, gender, scholar activism and higher education. She is a founding member of the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis (commonly referred to as The Network), which is based at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE), University of Newcastle, Australia. The Network includes founding members from South Africa, Ghana, Sudan, the USA and Australia. Email: [email protected]

Nonhlanhla Mthiyane

NONHLANHLA MTHIYANE is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of Education at Durban University of Technology, South Africa. She received her Master of Science in Education from SUNY College at Buffalo, and her PhD in Science Education from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. A recipient of the Spencer Foundation Fellowship and the NRF/NSF award, Nonhlanhla’s career started as a Biology teacher and spans secondary school, college of education and university. She is passionate about teacher education that is impactful and transformative, and that contributes significantly to finding solutions to societal problems. Her research interests include gender in education, teacher development, feminist methodologies and methods, and recently feminist decolonial methodologies. Her focus is on creating supportive and reflexive spaces for students and Black women academics, and in applying feminist decolonial methodologies to decolonise the curriculum, including research. Email: [email protected]

Mariann Skahan

MARIANN SKAHAN is a PhD candidate in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation ‘Language Education and Revival on the Jicarilla Apache Nation’ focuses on the impact of educational policies on heritage language use for the Jicarilla Apache community. Her work offers a critical analysis on the impact of US federal educational policies and examines current community-based initiatives to decolonise past educational trauma. Her work with FEMDAC has allowed her to gain insight into decolonial theory and Black feminist research, which she has incorporated into her research addressing educational equity and supporting programmes for underserved/underrepresented populations. Email: [email protected]