People

Founding Members

Professor Penny Jane Burke

Professor Burke is Global Innovation Chair of Equity and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Penny is passionately dedicated to developing methodological, theoretical and pedagogical frameworks that support critical understanding and practice of equity and social justice in higher education.

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Dr Gifty Gyamera

Dr Gifty Oforiwaa Gyamera is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Policy and Development, School of Public Service and Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). She is also the President of the Ghana Association of Public Administration and Management (GAPAM). She holds a PhD in Education Studies from University of Roehampton, UK and has extensive experience in teaching and research in Higher Education. Her research interests include Gender, Internationalization of Higher Education, Postcolonial/Decolonial studies and Curriculum Development. She is particularly interested in challenging marginalization of minorities, and discourses and practices perpetuating colonial ideologies and philosophies particularly in relation to higher education.

Dr Saajidha Sader

Dr Saajidha Sader is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. Her current teaching and activism is in social justice education. Her doctoral research was a feminist study of woman academics experiences of higher education reform in the context of globalization. Her research interests include decolonial feminist research, praxis & pedagogy. Her current research and activism focuses on gender, neoliberalism and higher education in South Africa from a decolonial perspective.

Professor Ronelle Carolissen

Professor Ronelle Carolissen is a Clinical Psychologist and full Professor of Community Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology, as well as the Vice-Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University.

Her research expertise and publications explore feminist social justice and critical community psychology perspectives on equity in higher education contexts. She has published numerous journal articles in these areas and is the co-editor of the books Community, self and identity: Educating South African university students for citizenship (HSRC Press, 2012),  Discerning critical hope in educational practices (Routledge, Nov/Dec 2013) and Transforming transformation in teaching and research in higher education (2018). Ronelle and co-authors have won numerous awards for Most scholarly paper and conference presentations at various conferences, including the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) (2008). She serves on the editorial boards of the journals Psychology in Society, Global Journal of Community Psychology, Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning.  She holds a prestigious Rector’s award for teaching excellence from the University of Stellenbosch (2005) as well as the 2016 Psychological Association of South Africa award for excellence in teaching Psychology in higher education. She is a visiting professor at Stanford University’s Bing overseas community engagement programme.

Professor Sondra Hale

Sondra Hale is Research Professor and Professor Emerita, Anthropology and Gender Studies Departments, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In addition to chairing Gender Studies, she co-directed UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies and co-edited The Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS). Among her research interests are social movements, women’s organizing, knowledge production, critical pedagogy, feminist and Sudanese art, and conflict areas. She has published dozens of articles and co-edited three books--one on feminist art; another on Sudan’s Killing Fields; and two with Gada Kadoda (one in progress, one published)—In progress is Capturing Cultural Capital: A Step towards Propelling Sudanese Intellectuals into the Global Milieu. In 2017 they published Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan: Identities, Mobilities, and Technologies. Hale’s monograph is Gender Politics in Sudan: Socialism, Islamism and the State. She has received numerous awards for teaching, activism, service, and life-time achievement awards: e.g., Sudanese Studies Association and Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, plus special awards from Sudan: Sudanese knowledge Society, Ahfad University for Women (honorary Ph.D.), and Salmmah Women’s Research Center.

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Dr Gada Kadoda

Dr Gada Kadoda received her Ph.D. in Software Engineering, M.Sc. in Information Systems and Technology, and her B.Sc. in Computer Science. Her work experience includes research and teaching posts in the UK and Barbados (1998 – 2005). Since 2005, she has taught at Sudanese higher education institutions, and served as consultant for NGOs in Sudan. Dr Gada Kadoda has published on software development, knowledge production, appropriate technology, ethics, social media and activism. She is co-Editor of Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan: Identities, Mobilities, and Technologies (2016). Gada was 2010’s African Scholar Guest, University of South Africa; is on UNICEF’s 2014 list of nine innovators to watch; and received an achievement award from Sudanese Women in Science Organization, 2015.

Associate Professor Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Since 2013, Lauren has been Associate Professor in the Institute of International and Comparative Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University (BNU). Lauren is the Secretary General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. Lauren  was United Kingdom Fulbright Scholar at Roehampton University in London (2012-2013) and immediately before that for three years a national program manager for the US Veterans Administration in Los Angeles. Lauren has been involved with the leadership of the Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA for eleven years and is a member of the Teaching in Higher Education Editorial Board.

Since the late 1990s, Lauren's community work, research and publications (in English, Spanish, and Portuguese) have focused on a wide range of issues related to gender equity in the Americas and Asia, including rural and urban (sexual) health education, non-formal education and community and social movements (including with an emphasis on theology and religion), higher education, global citizenship education, international service learning, and the humanities/social science nexus.

Lauren holds BAs in Hispanic Studies and Sociology from William & Mary (Virginia), and an MA and PhD in Social Science and Comparative Education (with a specialization in Comparative and International Education) from UCLA.

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Professor Relebohile Moletsane

Relebohile (Lebo) Moletsane is a full Professor and the JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. As part of her Chair in rural education, she has worked in South African rural schools and communities, focusing on teacher development around such issues as poverty, gender inequality, GBV and HIV & AIDS as barriers to education and development. She is co-PI (with Prof Reitumetse Mabokela, University of Illinois) on the Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded project: Neoliberalism, Gender and Curriculum Transformation in Higher Education (2019-2022).

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Dr Nonhlanhla Mthiyane

Dr Nonhlanhla Mthiyane is a Senior Lecturer in Life Sciences Education at Durban University of Technology, South Africa. She holds a M. Sc. Education from SUNY State at Buffalo, USA, and a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her teaching experience spans high school, college and university levels. Her research interests include gender in science education, gender and higher education, teacher development, decoloniality, and feminist pedagogy.

Belinda Munn

Belinda Munn is an experienced social justice advocate and equity practitioner who has worked across government, community organisations and the tertiary sector for twenty years. Belinda’s work is shaped by a commitment to asset and strength-based approaches. Belinda has provided extensive facilitatatitive support to the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis and is drawing on both her experience of the Network and the collective research of CEEHE as she embarks on a PhD exploring 'Home, Hope and the Gatekeepers of Life Long Learning'.

Image of Network Members 2018From left to right: Professor Sondra Hale, Professor Ronelle Carolissen, Dr Nonhlanhla Mthiyane, Dr Gada Kadoda, Professor Penny Jane Burke, Associate Professor Lauren Ila Misiaszek, Dr Saajhida Sader, Belinda Munn, Professor Relebohile Moletsane, Dr Gifty Gyamera.