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Transformation of society and institutions remains contested terrain in South Africa. Similarly, at a global level, and at any given time, there are distinct actors and spaces where different forms of progress and pushback are most prominent (Kessi, Marks & Ramugondo 2021), with some institutions remaining oppressive, even when they may otherwise project a transformative façade. Understanding transformation as both process and practice can, however, assist in finding ways of re-imagining society and institutions, including those in higher learning. This can shift us from progressive discourse as an end in itself, towards liberatory forms of knowledge creation and every day doing and being. This starts, however, with acknowledging that universities as we know them today were neither initially conceptualised for all thinkers and knowers, nor built for the prosperity of all human beings (Grosfoguel 2013; Kessi et al. 2021).
In this collection, we present articles with a focus on transformation as a humanising praxis in higher education. Authors were invited to contribute to the idea of transformation as a humanising praxis, and to respond to either one of two sets of probing questions. The provocation was ‘being human is not a given but a political potentiality which manifests on an oppression-liberation continuum of enacted harmful negations and salutogenic affirmations of our humanity’ (Kronenberg 2018:194). This provocation was dialectically arrived at as a synthesis in a doctoral study, which was urged by the deeply troubling diagnosis of post-1994 South Africa, a historically entrenched dehumaning societal condition (Kronenberg 2018). The first set of questions authors were invited to engage with was adapted from the economic geographer Bent Flyvbjerg (2001)’s critical contemporary interpretation of Aristotle’s intellectual virtue phronesis: (1) Where are we going with transformation? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this transformation desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? Curiously, this set of questions did not find any takers in the contributions received. We hope that this set of questions will nonetheless continue to inspire reflection and transformative practice, beyond this special collection. The second set, which some authors engaged, was informed by Richard Osmer (2008)’s four practical theological tasks: (1) What is going on? (descriptive-empirical task); (2) Why is this going on? (interpretative task); (3) What ought to be going on? (normative task); and (4) How might we respond? (pragmatic task).
Contributions that engaged transformation in higher education through the provocation explicitly, pointed to the closely intertwined relationship between history and space. As an example, Crafford, Munyaka and Kock (2025) argue that professional associations such as those for Industrial and Organisational Psychology struggle with transformation, helping to construct the associated professions as white spaces. To confront this, contributors highlighted the need to cultivate a human-centred approach through Ubuntu as protection and preservation of life in totality (Radebe 2025). In this way, the salutogenic (health-giving and health-enhancing) aspects of a humanising praxis are evoked. A human-centred approach allows for the reclaiming of embodied knowledge (Whittingham, Ndwandwe, Lavelle & Fortes 2025). Embodied knowledge includes the ability to see a person first even within doctoral supervision processes that can otherwise be dehumanising (Mabaso 2025) and to advance a Pedagogy of Authenticity (Titi 2025). Titi describes a Pedagogy of Authenticity as a transformative teaching and learning methodology that is based on Afrocentricity, multilingualism and the feminist ethics of care and employs translanguaging, acknowledging and utilising the full spectrum of linguistic resources that multilingual learners bring into the classroom to enhance student belonging and academic success. The foregrounding of language in efforts to advance a humanising praxis should come as no surprise. Colonisation, which at its core carries a dehumanising dynamic, introduced linguicide, which contributed to epistemicide (Grosfoguel 2013).
Contributions deployed Osmer’s inspired set of probing questions, exposing systemic challenges for disability inclusion (Gabriels, Abrahams & Lorenzo 2025) and challenging the notion of effective leadership as captured by neoliberal and colonising Euro-Western economic paradigms, which reproduce unequal relations of power. Also drawing on Osmer’s questions, Thomas, Schrieff-Brown, Van Wyhe, Joosub, Nkoana, Mohamad, Rousseau and Cassimjee (2025) found that disciplinary training programmes such as Neuropsychology in South Africa operate ‘within Western, individualistic, and androcentric ontologies, thereby marginalising indigenous epistemologies and discouraging inclusive participation’. In addition to this, Kilani (2025) engaged the idea of decolonising curricular disciplining methodologies to humanise the humanities through creative interventions from social movements, exploring what it means to be creative outside academic disciplines.
While for some contributors this was implicit, there was general agreement that, indeed being fully human is not a given but is dependent on varying degrees of freedom or constraint within the academy or professional environments, with people often navigating harmful negations of their humanity or dignity. Transformation, thus, becomes a humanising imperative, which can only succeed if enduring systemic and structural factors that sustain unequal power relations between racialised human identities and resultant skewed access to resources are confronted and dismantled.
References
Crafford, A., Munyaka, S.A. & Kock, R.G., 2025, ‘Transforming professional associations: An identity perspective’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a552. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.552
Flyvbjerg, B., 2001, Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gabriels, S., Abrahams, D. & Lorenzo, T., 2025, ‘Disability inclusion as a humanising and healing praxis in higher education transformation’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a550. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.550
Grosfoguel, R., 2013, ‘The structure of knowledge in Westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century’, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge XI(1), 73–90, viewed 24 August 2025, from http://scholarworks.umb.edu/humanarchitecture/vol11/iss1/8.
Kessi, S., Marks, Z. & Ramugondo, E., 2021, ‘Decolonizing knowledge within and beyond the classroom’, Critical African Studies 13(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1920749
Kilani, L., 2025, ‘Decolonising the curricular’s disciplining methodologies’ quest to humanise the humanities’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a567. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.567
Kronenberg, F.C.W., 2018, ‘Everyday enactments of humanity affirmations in post-1994 apartheid South Africa: A phronetic case study of being human as occupation and health’, Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, viewed 23 August 2025, from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29441.
Mabaso, B.P., 2025, ‘“You’ve always seen me as a person first”: An autoethnography on humanising PhD supervision’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a555. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.555
Osmer, R.R., 2008, Practical theology: An introduction, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, viewed 23 August 2025, from https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802817655/practical-theology/.
Radebe, N.Z., 2025, ‘Transforming university culture: A human-centred approach through Ubuntu’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a545. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.545
Thomas, K.G.F., Schrieff, L.E., Van Wyhe, K.S., Joosub, N., Nkoana, W., Mohamad, N. et al., 2025, ‘Transforming neuropsychology training programmes in South African higher education settings’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a610. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.610
Titi, N., 2025, ‘A pedagogy of authenticity: Inclusivity, belonging and care in decolonial undergraduate education’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a580. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.580
Whittingham, J., Ndwandwe, S., Lavelle, J. & Fortes, J., 2025, ‘Between human and researcher: Reclaiming embodied knowledge in the academy’, Transformation in Higher Education 10(0), a554. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v10i0.554
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