What is “Critical University Studies”? Put very briefly, Critical University Studies draws on feminist and anti-colonial reconceptualisations of education to think and act critically in relation to corporate, neoliberal forms taken by universities. It is an area of work which has expanded quite rapidly in the past decade or so in the United States (where there is a dedicated CUS book series ) – and on the African continent through the work of the Advancing Critical University Studies across Africa network. This network has a fantastic website, with open-access resources and regular hybrid events. It “endeavour[s] to find ‘other’ ways to study universities which are capable of thinking plural forms of emancipatory higher education imaginations and futures.” It is these “‘other’ ways’” that we hoped to discuss and unpack in this hybrid workshop by focusing on our methods of research.

The workshop (29 June 2023) was the opportunity to present our project and share ideas with colleagues in Bristol and online with members of the advisory board and collaborating team. The idea emerged organically from encounters and conversations with colleagues working on a number of projects that reflect critically on university life. Here is the programme.

Given the development stage we are at in the AFRIUNI project, it feels important to engage in further conversation across disciplinary lines. What can literary and cultural enquiry bring to the large body of social sciences research on Higher Education? And vice versa? The AFRIUNI project is concerned with four universities in francophone West Africa, yet it also feels important to connect to the ongoing work here in Bristol relating to the history of colonialism and transatlantic slavery, as well as current lived experiences of racism. 

Professor Saleem Badat kicked the workshop off with an outline presentation of a large-scale, collective project to write critical histories of South African universities. He described his own shift from writing Higher Education policy (he worked previously as Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, and at the Mellon Foundation in New York), to working on historical projects which are very much future-oriented, informed by Marxist thought and his own experience of activist struggle in the anti-Apartheid movement. Prof Badat cited the example of Rhodes University, and being told that this university was in the Eastern Cape, but not of or for the Eastern Cape. This raised the crucial question of place. Where are African universities? And how do they relate to place? How might dominant models of Higher Education derived from Northern metrics of ‘excellence’ be bypassed? Can the enduring mimicry of the Ivy League and Oxbridge be avoided or reimagined?

Next up, we gave a brief overview of the AFRIUNI project objectives, team, and methods. André Gaga spoke about the four case studies. Monique Kwachou brought together some of the cross-cutting themes and questions that have emerged in our weekly reading/walking/discussion group since April this year. These include the relationship between Africanizing and decolonizing higher education; perceptions and expressions of francophilia, francophobia and “franco-disdain”; Afrocentricity as a shared motivation and endeavour which affects our politics of citation, approach to ethics, and co-produced work; shared outputs (including timeline; exhibition; and publications).

The third presentation was by Dr Josie Gill, Associate Professor in Black British Writing at the University of Bristol. We were fortunate to hear an excerpt from her ongoing ‘Black Lecturer’ book project (funded by a Leverhulme Prize). The book takes the form of a memoir and critical reflection drawing on personal experience, analysis of campus fiction and the archives of the English department at the University of Bristol (from the early 1970s up to the 2000s). Its title is inspired by Beryl Gilroy’s landmark 1976 book, Black Teacher, an autobiographical account of Gilroy’s journey to becoming the first Black headteacher in the UK. Josie spoke about the effect of Covid, in creating time to reflect on the form of this project, and her recent close reading of voices and silences in the institutional archive. This was a powerful invitation to think about the crafting of our writing and how we foreground the subjective, affective experiences of the university.

Lastly, Dr Sue Timmis (School of Education, Bristol) spoke about the Southern Africa Rurality in Higher Education project. This collective project used participatory methods to work with students and co-construct understandings of rural students’ experiences across a number of South African universities. Students took control over their own narratives by researching their own lives, creating digital artefacts, and foregrounding issues they felt were important. They co-authored a multilingual pamphlet and were included as co-researchers, rather than passive objects of the research. This project has produced a number of working papers on its website and a recently published co-authored book. Beyond the achievements of the project, Sue raised some necessary critical questions:

• To what extent can we claim to adopt participatory methods and avoid extractive approaches within research projects with pre-determined research questions?  And in funded research with high levels of pre-specificity and requirements?  

• To what extent can co-researchers fully participate in all stages of the research including analysis and in publications as collaborating authors, given time commitments and practicalities involved? How can we develop these approaches further to mitigate these challenges? 

These presentations led to a wide-ranging discussion, chaired by Professor Leon Tikly (School of Education, Bristol). Workshop participants drew on their knowledge and experience of education in Ghana and Guinea-Bissau, as well as the presentations, to bring up a number of related questions and issues. These included: 

• Different experiences and definitions of coloniality across geographies, languages, and temporalities. 
• The impact of international rankings and regional regulatory bodies such as CAMES on interdisciplinarity and the form of project outputs.  
• The perceived lesser value or validity of creative forms of writing and ‘trade books’ in academic knowledge production. The importance of not conceding here. 
• The relative appetite for decolonisation in African universities / educational bodies. 
• Multilingual complexity and the presence of Anglophilia in francophone universities 
• The role of outposts of British/Northern universities on the African continent. 
• Cognate projects such as Mahmood Mamdani’s “Decolonization, the Disciplines and the University” project; Stellenbosch project on future universities; Ibali project. 
• A critical discussion of Olufemi Taiwo’s argument that decolonising discourse denies African agency.  
• The comparative dimension of Asian universities (especially in China) gaming international rankings. 
• The question of what appears to be a shared endeavour to get to the ‘character’ of the university, including how we register emotional and creative dimensions of university life. 
• What will the AFRIUNI project produce? We signalled the possibilities of creative outputs in exhibitions, our project website, podcasts, and constituting an archive (photographic/written documents/Whatsapp).  

Many thanks to all participants for their generous contributions to these discussions. We will keep the questions in mind as we continue to prepare for our periods of fieldwork in the coming year. We look forward to keeping in touch and hearing more about this ongoing work!