“I was a student at a time when liaising with faculty members or postgraduate students meant you had to challenge a structural power dynamic, which was not easy for the majority of students. At a time of global sanctions against South Africa and early post-democracy, co-creating knowledge or sharing multicultural experiences with students from other South African cultural and ethnic backgrounds was not part of my education – let alone those from the rest of Africa or internationally.

My first international experience was in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector, where a winter school programme introduced me to the possibilities of learning and un-learning my own ‘taken-for-granted’ knowledge and cultural assumptions. This was my first taste of the power that winter and summer school programmes, coordinated through universities’ international offices, could have in shaping one’s career trajectory and identity.

I have just joined SU International in the Centre for Partnerships and Internationalisation Support (CP&IS), where I am manager of Global Partnerships and Internationalisation Support. Previously, I spent four years leading the science and higher education programme at the British Council. I also supported teacher education, global citizenship education and education for sustainability through the Foundation for Environmental Education’s Eco-Schools programme, which had strong links across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, the European Union and Scandinavia.

Whilst I hold an international/global partnerships portfolio and have been immersed in a predominantly ‘northern’ view of internationalisation and knowledge production, I have also worked within the development space for many years, directly with students and teachers. Therefore, I am keenly aware of the pitfalls of ‘helicopter-in’ approaches to development, and of the decolonisation imperative as a guiding lens for our partnerships and internationalisation strategy at SU. I am deeply impressed by SU’s commitment to being ‘rooted in Africa, with a global reach’. This commitment has seen over 56,7% of our international students come from across the continent, and partnerships forged with institutions in over 30 African countries.

The role of the CP&IS team is to help nurture multilateral university partnerships and promote staff and student mobility at SU. This we do in collaboration with other SU International entities, such as the Global Education Centre, African Centre for Scholarship and the Centre for Collaboration in Africa. The objective is to ensure a vibrant academic and sociocultural environment at SU that contributes to the co-creation of knowledge worldwide. And I must admit, in the three short weeks of being at SU, I have been astonished at the scope and depth of SU’s partnerships! In this short time, our team has already had incoming delegations from Sweden, North America, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Japan. This whilst also supporting the various other units of SU International, responding to support calls from across faculties, event management, gathering and disseminating data, and working directly with staff and students in support of mobility.

Through these activities and a review of our current partnership portfolio, we hope to support SU’s aims of providing students with a transformative student experience and the skills to be global citizens, and building inclusive, purposeful partnerships that can help position the University as Africa’s leading research-intensive university. I look forward to the future at SU International.”