Iva Pesa is an Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. She specialises in the social and environmental history of Central Africa. Currently, Iva is the Principal Investigator in the European Research Council Starting Grant “Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa: Understanding Cultural and Political Responses to Environmental Transformation”. She teaches a range of courses on environmental history and African history and she is the coordinator of the MA specialisation Un/Sustainable Societies in Past, Present and Future. Recent publications include, “A Planetary Anthropocene“ and “Decarbonization, Democracy and Climate Justice”.

Dr Heloise Sathorar is the Head of Department for Secondary School Education (PGCE and BEd SP & FET) in the Faculty of Education at the Nelson Mandela University. Her research interest includes critical pedagogy, teacher education, higher education and critical community engagement. She has also done research in Accounting Education, and Entrepreneurship Education. Her most recent work is: Decolonizing the colonized mindset: Reflecting on lecturer dispositions to decolonize teacher education (JOE).

Professor for Music Education at the University of Oldenburg.
Research interests: transcultural music education; links between music and politics; research on culture and music of jazz and popular music; popular music and the rise of populism.

Dr Heloise Sathorar is the Head of Department for Secondary School Education (PGCE and BEd SP & FET) in the Faculty of Education at the Nelson Mandela University. Her research interest includes critical pedagogy, teacher education, higher education and critical community engagement. She has also done research in Accounting Education, and Entrepreneurship Education. Her most recent work is: Decolonizing the colonized mindset: Reflecting on lecturer dispositions to decolonize teacher education (JOE).

Alex van den Berg is a teacher educator for Chemistry at the University of Groningen. He is also a secondary school teacher in Groningen and works for a consortium of schools on the theme of “active learning”. He coordinates a group of teachers who are doing evidence informed research in their schools.

Professor of School Pedagogy and General Didactics
School of Educational and Social Sciences
Department of Educational Sciences
The focus of my empirical research is on practices of teaching, school and classroom change in development processes in context with changing educational policies and especially in progressive schools, and the embedded professionalization of teachers. My research is based in theories of practice and theories of subjectivation. I’m using methods of qualitative research.

Katharina Kaschel, Assistant to Study and Teaching Coordinator, Geschäftsstelle des Zentrums für Lehrkräftebildung – Didaktisches Zentrum (Centre for Teacher Education), University of Oldenburg, Germany

Teaching Fellow at the Department of English and American Studies
My academic focus lies on EFL teaching, particularly against the backdrop of evidence-based teaching and learning. Another field of interest is that of diversity education and pluralistic approaches in more general terms. In my teaching, I make an effort to put relevant literature as well as current research to the test by focusing on the viability of specific content, tasks or methods. Student involvement, critical discourse and feedback are indispensible when pursuing this joint goal. 

Professor Logamurthie Athiemoolam is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where he prepares pre-service teachers to teach English at home and first additional language levels. He also presents education modules focusing on issues and challenges in South African education to undergraduate students and language teaching and language across the curriculum modules to postgraduate students. In the presentation of his modules he uses drama pedagogy as a strategy.  At postgraduate level he has already supervised a number of Honours, Masters and Doctoral students with their research projects in the fields of language and general education, to completion. His fields of research are language teaching, education, drama-in-education and diversity pedagogy. 

Nokhanyo Nomakhwezi Mdzanga is an Associate Professor and deputy dean in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University. Her area of expertise is in language education, in particular, multilingualism and the teaching of English to second language speakers and isiXhosa to third of fourth language speakers.

Dr Zakhile Somlata is a Senior Lecturer at the Nelson Mandela University. He is responsible for isiXhosa teacher education for Secondary School Education in the faculty of Education. His research interests include language policy in higher education, multilingualism, peace linguistics for social justice, isiXhosa teacher education and transformative pedagogy for peacebuilding in education.

Dr Muki Moeng is Executive Dean in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University. She is Chair of the Faculty of Education Dean’s Forum and a member of the Council on Higher Education. Her research interests are in the scholarship of teaching and learning, school-based learning, social justice and humanising pedagogy.

Nadia Gerritsen is a Teacher Educator of English Foreign Language learning at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She specializes in the practical application of intercultural competence and engagement theories in the EFL classroom. 

Robert-Jan Smit works at the department of English at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden and Groningen, the Netherlands. After having taught in the IB’s Middle Years Programme (MYP) for more than 20 years, he currently is a teacher trainer at both the bachelor and the master programme where he takes a special interest in linguistics and didactics. He loves to play around with language and he often tries to be as punny as can be.

Noluvo Rangana is a PhD candidate in the faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University. Her research interests include Critical Participatory Action research, Participatory methodologies, Critical pedagogy, Community engagement, Community Schools, Diversity and Participation, and Community development. She is currently co-writing a book chapter on Postgraduate research providing an African epistemology on Participatory Action Learning and Action Research. Noluvo is an emerging scholar, a mother and she holds a Masters’ degree in Development studies.

Iva Pesa is an Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. She specialises in the social and environmental history of Central Africa. Currently, Iva is the Principal Investigator in the European Research Council Starting Grant “Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa: Understanding Cultural and Political Responses to Environmental Transformation”. She teaches a range of courses on environmental history and African history and she is the coordinator of the MA specialisation Un/Sustainable Societies in Past, Present and Future. Recent publications include, “A Planetary Anthropocene“ and “Decarbonization, Democracy and Climate Justice”.

Rachel Lara van der Merwe is an assistant professor in the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research explores the intersection of digital media, national identity, ecopolitics, and coloniality—particularly within South Africa and the Global South. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, she received a Ph.D. in Media Research and Practice from the University of Colorado Boulder and holds an MA in Cultural Studies, with a concentration in media studies, from Claremont Graduate University.

Badroen Ismail is a trained economist, SAQA-accredited assessor, and social research scientist with a PhD in Islamic Finance obtained from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Under the auspices of various research units, he constructed various econometric models which informed provincial policy decisions. Lately his research interests focus on the use of technology in the classroom and within the Faculty of Education.

Prof Marije Michel is chair of Language Learning within the Department of European Languages and Cultures (ELC) at Groningen University in the Netherlands. Born and raised in Switzerland by Dutch parents, she studied Dutch and German at Utrecht University and the Free University Berlin. In 2011 she defended her Phd thesis at the University of Amsterdam based on a research project focusing on Turkish and Moroccan learners of Dutch as a second language (L2). After a teaching fellowship at Tubingen University and a postdoc at Mannheim University, Marije moved to the UK where she became a lecturer for L2 learning and teaching at Lancaster University. In 2018, Marije joined Groningen University where she now supervises the teaching of eight languages taught within the ELC programme: Dutch, German, English, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Marije's research and teaching focuses on cognitive and interactive aspects of second language acquisition and task-based language pedagogy. Her recent work looks into teaching material and task design; uses eye-tracking to investigate cognitive processes of L2 writing, in particular, in digital contexts (e.g., text chat); and examines student motivation to learn other languages than English (LOTE), specifically German and French in the Netherlands.

Affiliation: School of Educational and Social Sciences
Department of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation
Language and Communication and its special needs education under special consideration of inclusive educational processes

Academic Focus:

• Professionalization of kindergarten and school teachers in inclusive settings
• Evidence-based (early) prevention and intervention
• Diagnosis und developmental advancement of competencies in language, reading and writing competences (early literacy)

Affiliation: School of Educational and Social Sciences, Department of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation, University of Oldenburg.

Research Associate: Projekt TiT (Teilhabe im Transitionsprozess); Special needs Education for individuals with an intellectual disability (ID)/ developmental delay

Research Associate: Project EuLe-F (Erzähl- und Lesekompetenz erfassen und fördern); Language and Communication and its special needs education under special consideration of inclusive educational processes

Academic Focus

• Digital Inclusion
• Human rights and Rights of Persons with disabilities
• Web Accessibility
• Digital Universal Design
• Alternative and Augmentative Communication
• Inclusive Research Methods
• Early Literacy Support

Prof Cina Mosito is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University. Her research interests include Teacher Education, Inclusive Education, and Educational Psychology. She facilitates the latter two subjects to undergraduate students while also supervising research projects of postgraduate students in these two areas. She is one of the contributors in a British Council South Africa and Department of Basic Education national project called Teaching for All that has developed Inclusive Education curriculum and material for initial and on-going teacher development programmes. 

For the past seven years, I have been lecturing in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. My academic interests are in the field of Inclusive Education, as well as Barriers to Learning. I have a distinct interest in learner support within the educational domain. I am also interested in the support available for teachers in the education setting and different educational contexts, especially in their accommodation of learners presenting with barriers to learning. Community schools and their approach to engagement, participation, and collaboration with multiple stakeholders, together with the underlying principles thereof, is another field of interest and research.