Annual Research Report 2020

18 Social Justice and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa Volume II : Theory and Practice in Higher Education (2020) [Palgrave Macmillan] and Mediating Learning in Higher Education in Africa: From Critical Thinking to Social Justice Pedagogies (2021) [Brill/Sense]. Also, one of my latest publications with a deeply African philosophical slant is African Higher Education in the 21st Century: Epistemological, Ontological and Ethical Perspectives [2021]. In all these treatises, I traverse the social justices in educational spaces that dominated my rural background experiences, resulting from the inequalities endorsed by colonialism in Africa, as well as my life as an educator, teacher educator and academic. I use my philosophical training to write what I want. To date, I can safely boast of 85 publications in the form of journals, book chapters and conference presentations, seven co-edited book volumes and four forthcoming books with reputable international publishers. To those who wish to enter the world of scholarship, I advise them to proceed not only with patience and passion, but also with the courage to confront the impediments that might frustrate them from the start. Nonetheless, once they make the sacrifices of sleepless nights and a reduced social life, they can enjoy some of the rewards, including the glamour of local and international trav- el without spending from their own pockets. Hard work through research pays off. My research has comprised a systematic inquiry into new facts in knowledge traversing the local, regional, national and international school systems through to higher education from a philosophical/ theoretical perspective. Over the years, from 2010 when I pub- lished my first paper from my PhD proposal, I have not looked back notwithstanding the impediments rooted in the politics of knowl- edge that characterise local academia. Despite having had long experience in the higher education sector, I entered the scene of researching for publication later. In order to catch up and beat the ‘publish or perish’ mantra, I worked extremely hard during my can- didature as a doctoral fellow and participated in many workshops, writing retreats and conferences on writing for publication. By the time I completed PhD, I had 12 publications under my belt. I owe this to a senior professor (who was not even my supervisor) who guided me and put me through my paces. During the initial stages in the scholarship of discovery, I also learnt to collaborate with peers, supporting and partnering with them in co-publications. On completion of my PhD studies, instead of proceeding to take up full-time employment, I moved on to register for two-and-a- half- year postdoctoral fellowship to deepen my research trajectory. It is here that I learnt various academic skills, including networking with renowned scholars through extensive local and international travels to workshops and conferences. I have never shied away from presenting my work to large audiences, receiving criticism and, at times, negative rebuttals, only to strengthen my resolve and develop a “hard skin” to embrace the value of critique. While some of my initial works originated from my PhD thesis, one piece of advice I was given was not to publish my thesis in a book directly after graduation, but to explore some unresolved themes in the thesis by conceptualising them into theoretical papers. Against the advice of my supervisor not to write on some of my Afrocentric/ social justice views on education, I unravelled all the cached ideas of the PhD years to start focusing on knowledge and change in high- er education. My seminal two-volume book, Knowledge and Change in African higher Education (2017) (co-edited), published by Brill/ Sense, marked my entry into the field of book publishing. I then proceeded to publish several articles in international journals while concomitantly conceptualising synopses for four books seated in my liberatory mindset which preoccupied my life for a long time. This culminated in the publication of Inclusion as Social Justice in African Higher Education (2020) [Brill/Sense] and since joining Sol Plaatje, I have published Rurality Social Justice and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa Volume I: Theory and Practice in Schools (2020), Rurality “ I never shied away from presenting my work to large audiences, receiving criticismand, at times, negative rebuttals only to strengthen myself more and develop a “hard skin” to embrace the value of critique… Hard work pays for a pleasurable life through research .” From Peasantry to Philosophical Scholarship: Every researcher has a story to tell Prof. Amasa Ndofirepi