The second annual international conference of the Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) started today, Monday 7 December, at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
Discussing the theme “Inclusion and Exclusion in Higher Education”, SANORD representatives and delegates from its member institutions will explore legacies of inclusion and exclusion in the SADC and Nordic regions. They will ask what policies and measures governments, educational institutions or pressure groups have adopted to transcend them and with what effects? They will look at how these policies changing today as societies are affected by processes of democratization, cultural integration, climate change or economic crisis.
The proceedings begin with two pre-conference sessions dealing with “Improving Multilateral Networking” and “Europe-Africa Networking/Brokerage Event” respectively. The latter concluding in a panel discussion on bilateral and multilateral research cooperation that looks at successes, challenges, opportunities and best practice.
At the official opening of the conference this evening, Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor, Dr Saleem Badat, and Sigmund Gr?nmo, Chairperson of SANORD and Rector the University of Bergen, Norway, will welcome delegates to the inagural plenary session.
Professor Kerstin Sahlin, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, Sweden will give a keynote address titled, “Navigating in the global university landscape”. Her talk will describe and comment on recent developments in the global university landscape that have resulted in it becoming more market like.
“Universities are expanding almost everywhere and with this expansion follow discussions on prioritizing and specializing, but also discussions of the roles of universities in various parts of the world. Assessments and comparisons - in the form of rankings, certifications and the like - are expanding as well. Student mobility expands too,” said Sahlin. “These developments have resulted in a university landscape that has become increasingly market-like and, as with all markets, initiatives are taken to intensify and handle competition and collaboration.”
Sahlin will also comment on how a university network, such as SANORD, becomes increasingly important in this contemporary higher education landscape in order to facilitate collaborative efforts that allow partner universities to share and transfer knowledge to the benefit of all.
Sahlin has served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Uppsala University since 1 July 2006 and is also Professor of Public Management in Uppsala’s Department of Business Studies. Prior to this she held a chair at Stockholm University and was the Director for the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE).
She received her PhD from Ume? University and has also held positions at the Stockholm School of Economics. She has been a visiting researcher at Stanford University and a number of other institutions.
She has published widely in the fields of organizational reform, public management, project management, as well as on the development of global standards and regulations. Sahlin is a member of several learned societies and she has held a number of positions of trust for the Swedish Research Council, the European Science Foundation and a number of other international scholarly organizations.
Professor Chrissie Boughey, Dean of Teaching and Learning at Rhodes, will deliver a second keynote address titled “Inclusion and Exclusion in the Changing University: A Teaching and Learning Perspective”.
Professor Boughey is also Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes. Working from a position in critical social theory, her research interests lie in the provision of access to and success in higher education for diverse groups of students.
Her talk will focus on how changes at a global level have challenged universities in profound ways. “Although universities have responded to these challenges by restructuring and growing in various ways, changes in teaching and learning practices have not always kept pace with other kinds of change,” said Prof Boughey.
“My presentation draws on South African work in order to identify institutional culture as an element which is key to the inclusion or exclusion of ‘non-traditional’ students in higher education. In doing so, it questions much of the activity intended to enhance teaching and learning which is currently being promoted at universities across the world.”
Picture Caption: (L) Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Uppsala University and (R) Professor Chrissie Boughey, Dean of Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University