Biographies and geographies: Who teaches matters: Reimagining knowledge, belonging and the university

Behari-Leak,  Kasturi

Biographies and geographies: Who teaches matters: Reimagining knowledge, belonging and the university

Other

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Faculty

Centre for Higher Education Development

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract

This article is an expanded scholarly reflection arising from the inaugural lecture Biographies and Geographies: Who Teaches Matters: Reimagining Knowledge, Belonging and the University, delivered at the University of Cape Town in May 2026. Using biography as an epistemic and reflexive resource, the article explores how the histories we inherit and the institutional geographies we inhabit shape what we know, what we teach, how we lead and what we are able to imagine. Its central proposition is that who teaches matters because knowledge is never encountered independently of the knower, and because academic biographies shape what becomes visible, valued, authorised and possible within the university. Drawing on experiences of curriculum transformation, decolonial scholarship, academic staff development and leadership in South African higher education, the article argues for recognition, reflexivity and possibility as important conditions for transforming universities beyond inclusion and representation. It extends the question of who teaches to ask who develops teachers, who leads, and who is permitted to imagine the future university. Against the contemporary pressures of artificial intelligence, automation, efficiency and innovation, the article argues for an understanding of the university as both an epistemic and deeply human project. It concludes through the metaphor of Chapter Zero, the “university of the not-yet”, as a disposition towards what remains unrecognised, emergent and possible, inviting universities to attend to the biographies, geographies and relationships through which more just and pluriversal futures might become thinkable.