Keynote Speakers
Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture Keynote Speaker
Professor Deevia Bhana
Professor Deevia Bhana holds the South African Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and is a B1 NRF-rated scholar. Her research examines how gender and sexuality comes to matter in the young life course and the role education can play in shaping decisions, policies and structures that impact sexual well-being and gender equality. She has 15 books to her credit, five are sole-authored, and over 200 peer-reviewed publications. She is a founding member of the Global South Childhood Studies Network, has advised UNESCO on sexuality education, and holds senior editorial leadership roles in international journals.
International Keynote Speaker
Professor Yusuf Sayed
Yusuf Sayed is a Professor of Education specialising in global education policy and equity focusing on inclusion and social justice. Yusuf has over 30 years of experience in international education as a scholar and practitioner across diverse academic institutional and development contexts. His scholarship focuses on the implications for national and global education policy goals of efforts to achieve equity and inclusion in and through education in countries of the global South. He is currently engaged in several large-scale studies, including a review of the status of teacher policy across 40 sub-Saharan African countries, and a study of teacher agency in Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan.
National Keynote Speaker
Professor André Keet
Professor André Keet, from Kylemore, Stellenbosch, is a teacher and scholar-practitioner who moves between academic and executive work in the interest of a transformative, responsive university. After years at the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality, he turned to academia in late 2007, holding professorial appointments in South Africa and abroad. He is Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Engagement and Transformation, and Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET), at Nelson Mandela University. His scholarship is relational and intergenerational. It reads higher education transformation, human rights, decentred critical university studies, and university–science–industry–society relations through an unlikely quartet: friendship, politics, love, and justice.
National Keynote Panel Member
Professor Boitumelo Diale
Professor Boitumelo Diale is a Full Professor, former Dean of the Faculty of Education, and the inaugural SARChI Chair in Inclusive Rural Education and Early Childhood Development at Sol Plaatje University. A distinguished scholar and academic leader, she has held several senior leadership roles at the University of Johannesburg, including Vice Dean for Teaching and Learning, Head of the Department of Educational Psychology, and President of the UJ Convocation. She is a C2-rated NRF researcher with a substantial publication record and has supervised more than 40 Master’s, Doctoral, and Postdoctoral Research Fellows. Professor Diale is also a registered Educational Psychologist with over 20 years of professional practice and the founder of Africa’s first Center for Neurodiversity at the University of Johannesburg. Her work is widely recognized for advancing inclusive education, Neurodiversity, educational psychology, and career development, and her leadership continues to shape innovation in higher education, policy, and the mentoring of emerging scholars across Africa.
National Keynote Panel Member
Professor Ursula Hoadley
Professor Ursula Hoadley is a Professor in Curriculum in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. Her teaching and research focuses on the relationship between forms of curriculum and pedagogy and social inequalities. She has an interest in mixed methods and interdisciplinary research and is currently co-PI of the Mixed Methods Investigation of Learner Assessment Progress and Support (MILAPS) Project. Professor Hoadley is widely published and sits on several international editorial boards of journals. She is a B-rated NRF researcher and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
National Keynote Panel Member
Professor Boitumelo Moletsane
Professor Relebohile Moletsane is Professor and FALF-Wits-NRF Research Chair in Gender-based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Using participatory visual methodology, Moletsane’s research interests include gender justice, sexual and reproductive health, girlhood studies, and rural education and development. Recent publications include several co-edited books, such as the 2024 book Where am I in the Picture? Researcher Positionality in Rural Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (with Claudia Mitchell & Katarina Giritlin), African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development (2025). Palgrave MacMillan (with Cymone Fourshey & Marla Jaksch), and Ethical Practice in Participatory Visual Research with Girls and Young Women in Rural Communities (2021). New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, with Lisa Wiebeisek, Astrid Treffry-Goately and April Mandrona.
Prof. Jonathan Jansen
Prof. Jonathan Jansen is a Distinguished Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University and the immediate past Academy of Science of South Africa President. He started his career as a high school Biology teacher in the Cape and holds a PhD from Stanford and honorary doctorates from four universities, including the University of Edinburgh.
He is the author of the award-winning book Knowledge in the Blood (Stanford University Press), and his recent books include Corrupted: a Study of Chronic Dysfunction in South African Universities (2023, Wits University Press) and The Decolonisation of Knowledge (2022, Cambridge University Press).
He was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and will be the Chin Yidan Global Fellow at Harvard University in 2024.