Transforming Higher Education Scholarship: After Covid-19 and in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution

Book excerpt: In this edited book we are compelled to think about the convergences between the technological advances made possible by lockdowns brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic and increased 4IR use in the South African context. The insights presented in this edited volume make a case that transformation of higher education scholarship cannot happen without making space for historically excluded knowers, thinking differently about historically marginalized knowledges and by constantly grappling with new developments and how they facilitate or encumber the transformation project. Consequently, Transforming Higher Education Scholarship After Covid-19 and in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution does a good job of illustrating how shifts towards the advancement of 4IR in the South African Higher Education sector impacted the transformation trajectory. In their efforts to reimagine universities in Africa into African universities the authors in this edited volume grapple with how race and gender intersect in making the experiences of Black women in the South African academy untenable. The chapters also contend for the significance of pluriversal knowledges by making a case for the place of Indigenous Knowledges Systems in building African universities. As we grapple with the changes the 4IR has on the world and the teaching and learning landscape, some of the chapters in this volume make a compelling argument for thinking both from a critical perspective about what the challenges the developments coming out of these technologies mean for South Africa and the continent as well as what possibilities for positive impact these tools bring. Transforming Higher Education Scholarship After Covid-19 and in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution, is timely and makes an important contribution to higher education transformation discourses.