Photo: Give a Child a Future / UWC
Institutional leadership
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While service work tends to be the least loved part of any academic position, it is essential to building more socially just institutional and departmental cultures. My approach to service work is to help make my university as caring, supportive and generous as possible. Universities are the everyday spaces in which academics work and students learn -- and how they operate matters a great deal. When institutions or processes aren't working as well as they should be -- and ego, habit, or audit culture stands in the way of dignity and justice -- we must allow them to break and rebuild them better.
Currently, as the Postgraduate Coordinator for Geography, my service work is geared toward the development and professionalization of Masters and PhD students at UWC. In this role, I serve on the Arts Faculty Higher Degrees Committee and the Department of Historical Studies Ethics Committee. More that that, however, I have built communal spaces for students to read and write together to make the experience of postgraduate education less isolating. I also offer professionalization workshops to help our students promote themselves as future academics. Additionally, I am working with a group of students from two Cape Town-based institutions to cultivate and support Black Geographies research from South Africa. Outside of the UWC, I do considerable service for the discipline of Geography. In particular, I am increasingly sought after as an examiner for MA and PhD theses and I review about 10 articles per year for international journals. |
Right to the DisciplineAidan Africa, Kolosa Ntombini, Bridgette Lebeko, Thuthuzelekani Mvimbi, Musfiqah Majiet and I are recipients of the Antipode Foundation “Right to the Discipline” Grant.
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MY SERVICE WORK
Building Postgraduate communities
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Black Geographies CollectiveOne of the most important subfields in Geography today is Black Geographies. While this has primarily emerged in the Americas, there is a significant opportunity for South Africa to lead global conversations about race, racism and place-making. I am the faculty support person for a cohort of postgraduate students at UWC and UCT, who are stretching this disciplinary subfield. We have received funding from the Antipode Foundation to support a multi-campus reading group, seminar series and conference with local and international speakers.
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Proposal WorkshopsI lead weekly proposal writing workshop for all first year Masters and PhD students in the Geography department. We meet weekly to learn about what makes a good proposal and how to write one. Two people share their drafts each week, and everyone else reads and comments on them. Those who share their proposals learn how to develop them further, while those who comment on them to learn how to give good, constructive feedback.
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Writing SeminarsWith Phindezwa Mnyaka from the Department of Historical Studies, I co-lead weekly writing seminars for all advanced Masters and PhD students in Geography and History. Each week two people share their writing and everyone else reads and comments on their drafts. Students learn from one another about how to develop strong arguments and mobilise supporting evidence. The space also serves as a regular, reliable support network and a low-stakes place to submit early work and receive generous feedback.
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Postgraduate conferencesEach year, I work with our MA and PhD students to plan and run their own conference to present their work. The students choose the theme, arrange themselves into sessions, decided on titles for those sessions, learn how to chair panels and field positive questions, collect abstracts and biographies from panelists, design and print the program, pick the caterers and food, and run the technologies. For many of my students, this is the first time they have ever attended (much less) planned a conference.
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Department Handbook and websiteOne of the most difficult parts of completing a postgraduate degree in South Africa is understanding and adhering to the rules and procedures. This includes filing considerable paperwork on time, particularly in the first and last years of the degree. I developed an online handbook to explain how all of these processes work, with links to all of the forms that must be completed and sent to the Arts Higher Degrees Committee. I also created a department wide progress tracking tool to understand what steps each student needs to complete in each semester.
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