PEER Network Africa Hub Online Seminar Series
Prof. Azeem Badroodien in conversation with Assoc. Prof. Divine Fuh


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You are invited to attend the second online seminar hosted by the PEER Network Africa Hub – “Re-making African scholars: Everyday sociality and the (im)possibility of monastic seclusion in African universities”. Join us online for a conversation with Professor Azeem Badroodien and A/Professor Divine Fuh.

Abstract: A key aspect of the critique of the colonial legacies of higher education in Africa remains the inequalities engendered by everyday life pressures and the consequences for scientific practice. This paper provides a reflection on the scientific lives of African scholars by critically examining the social contexts and conditions under which knowledge production occurs, especially in universities in low and middle-income countries. I am particularly interested in the social dynamics and local pressures that underpin the practice of scholarship, the strategies deployed to negotiate monastic idealism, and the possible ways in which these both impact and shape debates and the knowledge produced. Overall my aim is to understand how scholars negotiate and sustain voice, dignity and intellectual respectability within the precarious context of knowledge insecurities. Introducing the idea of embedded scholarship, I argue that universities must seek to embrace rather than dismiss new circuits of scientific value that celebrate rather than punish their embedded in everyday sociality.

Speaker bios

A/Professor Divine Fuh is the Director of HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he is also an associate professor of anthropology. His work focuses on the politics of suffering and smiling amongst urban youth, the political economy of African knowledge, and also the ethics of AI.

Professor Azeem Badroodien is the Director of the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, UCT, where he is also a professor of education policy. He is a sociologist and historian of education who focuses on the sociality of youth in marginalised spaces. He is also the co-PI of the PEER Network Project Africa Hub.