SOTL in the South

Clelia O. Rodríguez is a global scholar, born and raised in El Salvador. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Toronto. Before holding a Human Rights Traveling Professorship where she taught in the United States, Nepal, Jordan, and Chile, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Ghana. Prior to teaching at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education about Settler Colonialism and Pedagogies of Oppression, she was a Gender Academic University Advisor in Bolivia, as part of a partnership between CECI and Global Affairs Canada.

Recently, she has collaborated with at the University of Fort Hare teaching postgraduate workshops. She is the founder of SEEDS for Change, an educational international platform bringing together Black, Indigenous and People of Colour to create pedagogies of liberation. She is the author of Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression and Pain (Fernwood Publishing, 2018) and is currently working on her second book titled, The Politics of the Uterus. She is committed to Social Justice Education, Decolonizing Approaches to Learning, Critical Race and Cultural Theories, and Gender and Women’s Studies.

Her work has been published in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, in the Journal of Popular Education, Critical Pedagogy and Militant Research in Chile, the Black Youth Project, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, Radical Teacher, Postcolonial Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, among others. Her forthcoming article “Fui, soy, seré: (Mal)nacida. (Mal)criada. (Mal)hablada. (Mal)educada. (Mal)aventurada” is forthcoming in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 

Khairiyah Mohd Yusof is the founding Director of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Centre for Engineering Education and is the President for the Society of Engineering Education Malaysia.  She had held positions as Vice President of the Federation of Engineering Education Societies (2012 – 2018) and Board Member representing Asia for the Research in Engineering Education Network (2012 – 2017).  A practitioner, trainer, mentor, and researcher in scholarly engineering education practices, she has shared her work locally and globally, through invitations to speak and conduct workshops throughout Malaysia and various countries in Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe and North and South America.  

She is on the Editorial and Advisory Boards of journals, such as the ASEAN Journal of Engineering Education, Journal of Engineering Education, Journal of Education for Chemical Engineers and European Journal of Engineering Education.  She leads various funded engineering education projects, such as the Consortium Grant on Teaching and Learning for 4IR from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education, the World Bank-funded OBE-SCL training of faculty members in Higher Education in Afghanistan, Crafting Problems for Learning Control Engineering from Mathworks Inc. USA, and an Engineering X project on Enhancing the Quality of Engineering Education founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd’s Register. 

Among her wide-ranging work, she is most passionate about guiding young academics in developing a scholarly approach in higher education, especially in STEM areas.  For her work, she received several awards including the 2018 IFEES Duncan Fraser Global Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, 2017 Student Platform on Engineering Education Mentoring Award and 2015 Frank Morton IChemE Global Award for Chemical Engineering Education Excellence.   

Lesley Le Grange is Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He has 232 publications to his credit and serves on editorial boards of nine peer-reviewed journals. He has delivered more than 160 academic presentations and is recipient of several academic awards and prizes, the most recent the SAERA Honours Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to educational research in South Africa.

Lesley is President of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK), a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and is rated an internationally acclaimed researcher by the National Research Foundation.

Dr Kirti Menon is the Senior Director of Academic Planning, Quality Promotion and Academic Staff Development at the University of Johannesburg.  She is a Research Associate affiliated to the UJ Faculty of Education. She is widely published in the field of higher education, curriculum transformation, social exclusion and access. More recently, publications include a focus on the impact of COVID-19 on higher education. 

Shireen Motala held the position of the Director of the Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, from 1999 to February 2010.  Her academic qualifications are BA (UDW), B Social Science Honours (UCT), MA (University of Warwick), PGCE (University of London) and PhD (Wits).

In March 2010, she was appointed as Director of the Postgraduate Research Centre: Research and Innovation at the University of Johannesburg, and in 2015, Senior Director of the Postgraduate School.  In 2020, she was appointed NRF SARChI Chair: Teaching and Learning. She was Chairperson of the Education Policy Consortium from 2006 to 2010 and Chairperson of the UNESCO South African Commission from 2002 to 2006. In 2010 she was appointed by the Minster of Higher Education and Training to serve on the Council of Higher Education (CHE) for two terms until 2018. She was the first inaugural president of the South African Research Association (SAERA) from 2013 to 2014.

She has worked extensively in research and has provided leadership for regional and international partnerships which have led to collaborations with universities across Africa and with northern partners.  Her research interests and expertise have been in the areas of education financing, access and equity and education quality across the higher education and schooling sectors.