Event Details

The Centre for Social Justice and Well-Being in Education is thrilled to invite you to an enlightening hybrid seminar featuring two distinguished speakers Dr. Patience Nyamunda (University of Glasgow) and Dr. Monique Kwachou (Bristol University).

Dr. Patience Nyamunda is a lecturer in the School of Education and a member of the People, Place, and Social Change (PPSC) Research and Teaching Group in Glasgow university.

Informed by the capabilities approach (Amartya Sen & Martha Nussbaum), Dr. Patience is interested in how universities foster human development and create more just, inclusive, and sustainable societies. She focuses on the experiences of marginalised groups in different higher education contexts. Her areas of interest are conceptions and operationalisation of quality in higher education, with a specific focus on teaching and learning; and higher education access, participation, and employment/ employability.

‘Educational Institutions and Epistemic Freedoms: The experiences of second-generation Zimbabwean migrants in England’

Informed by narratives on the educational experiences of 10 second-generation Zimbabwean immigrants, this presentation explores how English educational institutions enable young people to pursue learning opportunities to be and do what they value. Key to learning is the capability for epistemic contribution described by Fricker (2015) as the capacity and opportunity to freely articulate and share one’s ideas, without having them rejected based on testimonial or hermeneutical injustice. The young people interviewed in this research study had mixed learning experiences where some could freely participate and contribute to knowledge creation while others’ epistemic capacities were stifled because of their race or reference to “knowledges” informed by their migrant background. The research findings reveal the need for educational institutions to foster this capability through the curriculum and teachers' and lecturers’ equal recognition of all students as epistemic contributors. Speaking to the broader theme of decolonisation and the plurality of knowledges (Santos 2014), such narratives highlight the need for educational institutions to be more inclusive and pursue diverse ways of knowing and understanding. This is especially important, given their role as creators and disseminators of knowledge.

Dr.Monique Kwachou is a Cameroonian writer, youth worker, researcher and practitioner of gender and education for development. Monique’s work (research and practice) generally involves the theory and application of African-feminist thought, critical pedagogy, and youth advocacy in the improvement of education quality/outcomes for the addressing of social injustices and toward sustainable development. Monique has over close to a decade of academic and practitioner experience gleaned from working with a range of employers; from higher education institutions to civil society organizations and international development agencies. She is currently employed as a research associate at the University of Bristol working on the ERC-funded AFRIUNI project.

“The Creative Lives of African Universities: The UNIYAO I Case”

The Creative Lives of African Universities: Pedagogies of Hope and Despair - called the AFRIUNI project for short is an ERC-funded research project that seeks to explore and capture cultural representations and lived experiences of university life across four francophone African universities from 1960 to the present day. This project seeks to further understanding of and appreciation for the roles selected higher education institutions (case studies) have played in the socio-political contexts of four multilingual cities: Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Yaoundé (Cameroon) and Abomey-Calavi (Benin).

While sharing similarities, the AFRIUNI project team employs a variety of methodologies and epistemologies for truly interdisciplinary research. This makes each case study unique despite the commonalities that they share by being rooted in the same goal: that is the documenting of the socio-political and affective role of cultural production and the investigation of individual and collective self-realization attained within these universities.

With regards to the University of Yaounde I, the researcher associate charged with said case study has developed an original ethnographic action research (E.A.R) strategy for the achievement of the AFRIUNI objectives. With this presentation, the research associate presents for critique the E.A.R strategy put forward for achieving AFRIUNI objectives and shares significant findings made thus far.

This seminar promises to offer valuable insights into critical issues affecting social justice and well-being within the educational landscape.

We look forward to your participation and hope to see you there!

How to Participate:

• In-Person: Join us at B59, located at County South
• Online: Register for the webinar