Harnessing Technology for Cultural Transformation: A Case Study From South Africa

Taming the technology used for teaching and learning in higher education can take different forms. These taming activities are dependent on the context – and critical issues that affect higher education within those contexts – as well as the agency of academics to address those issues. The focus of this paper is on one such context, where cultural transformation is a key theme in higher education. In this paper, I reflect on how technology has been harnessed by academic change agents to challenge cultural norms while recognising diversity within their classrooms.

Re-gendering the UK House of Commons: The Academic Critical Actor and Her ‘Feminist in Residence’

Parliaments are everywhere highly masculinized institutions, created by and for men. Yet they are not unchanging institutions. The UK has just undergone an Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Gender Sensitive Parliament’s audit. This was one of the recommendations of the 2016 The Good Parliament Report. With its 43 recommendations, The Good Parliament Report was a blueprint for a diversity sensitive House of Commons. Since then, and through the newly established Commons Reference Group on Representation and Inclusion, Westminster has addressed some of its diversity insensitivities. This article reflects back on the author’s secondment to Parliament and how her relationship with a feminist official was critical to the success of Report and indeed the day-to-day practice of seeking to be an impactful academic change actor.