The Durban University of Technology (DUT) hosted the inaugural professorial lecture of Professor Raisuyah Bhagwan, Full Professor in the Department of Community Health Studies, Faculty of Health Sciences.
The lecture was held online via Microsoft Teams and physically at the DUT Ritson Hotel School on 6 July 2022.
In attendance at the esteemed lecture were the DVC: Research, Innovation and Engagement-Professor Sibusiso Moyo; DVC: Teaching and Learning-Prof Nokuthula Sibiya; Prof Suren Singh-Executive Dean: Faculty of Applied Sciences; Dr Moeti Kgware-Head of Department: Community Health Studies; Dr Pavitra Pillay Deputy Dean: Faculty of Health Sciences, academic staff, students, family and friends.
Prof Bhagwan is an active researcher who has published widely on spirituality, social work and community engagement. She has been involved in several international collaborative partnerships with scholars from America and India. She won the prestigious CHE-HELTASA Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019 and was also honoured at the UKZN Distinguished Teachers Awards Ceremony, after delivering the keynote address at this function. She also received an award from Council for developing the DUT Student Volunteer Champions Programme, in 2019. Prof Bhagwan has led the research programme, teaching undergraduate research methodology in the Child and Youth Care Program, supervising a number of post graduate students both in the Faculty of Health Sciences and across DUT. She has published extensively on spirituality, indigenous cultures, community university partnerships and the use of community contexts to strengthen teaching and learning.
Giving the context of the importance of an inaugural lecture was Programme Director, Prof Singh. He first conveyed that the Vice-Chancellor and Principal: Prof Thandwa Mthembu’s and Executive Dean: Faculty of Health Sciences, Prof Gugu Mchunu had both conveyed their sincere apologies for not being able to attend this prestigious event.
“We are here to celebrate and to recognise the achievements of Prof Bhagwan who was granted Full Professorship in 2019. These lectures offer professors the once-off occasion to articulate to the world not only their proficiencies and experiences, but their contribution to scholarship, and their personal journeys in their respective fields as well as their current research activities, directions and their future plans of their research to the public and the academic community,” he said.
Giving the opening remarks at the lecture was Prof Moyo who expressed that she has known Prof Bhagwan for over 15 years and highlighted that Prof Bhagwan is an inspiration to many in academia, for being a female scientist, a mother, and an established NRF C2-rated researcher. She further added that Prof Bhagwan has built over the last few decades a focus on social work and community engagement and that she works in an interdisciplinary area that is aligned to the university strategy, ENVISION2030.
Introducing the inaugurand was Dr Kgware who shared a brief biography on Prof Bhagwan and of her expert work prowess to the attendees. He noted Prof Bhagwan’s humanitarian contribution to students across the Faculty of Health Sciences, by offering them psycho-social support during the COVID-19 pandemic, through the “HOPE PROJECT.” Prof Bhagwan then shared her lecture talk titled: To Serve a Greater Purpose: The Transformation of Higher Education Through Knowledge Democracy and Engaged Scholarship.
She spoke of her personal pursuit to understand the value of learning in deep rural spaces as they form rich contexts within which students could be exposed to subaltern forms of knowledge or the local, traditional or indigenous knowledge of marginalised communities.
She explained that the transformative power of higher education can only be realised when academics and students partner with communities to co-produce vibrant, locally contextualised knowledge and practices. Her lecture showcased her journey across
Gauteng, Limpopo, and the Western and Eastern Cape to share the diverse voices, knowledge’s and experiences of academics and students, who are advancing the engagement mandate, in socially excluded and marginalised contexts. Through this she highlighted the value of “deep” engagement with informal traders, those in informal settlements, and others challenged by a lack of electricity and water in rural spaces and how universities have used their collective knowledge and expertise to respond to the health and environmental ills challenging such people. “Through these intellectual and practical explorations in communities, I came to appreciate the value of mutually beneficial partnerships and how to work synergistically with these wider ecosystems of knowledge.
Prof Bhagwan further reflected on an international collaborative project, in Jamalpada, which enabled rich discoveries related to knowledge democracy, through participatory research approaches, with a tribal community in India. She highlighted how social work students were exposed to rich tribal knowledge and practices, could understand the value of tribal councils, tribal communal care and were able to practice social justice at a grassroots level through their deep immersion in a “forest space.” She concluded saying that despite the transformative potential of engagement, it still remained sporadic and piece-meal, instead of being deep and pervasive within each institution’s academic culture. She emphasised that our curricula should become decolonised and community engaged and we should seek to serve a greater purpose through new understandings of knowledge democracy.
She then thanked everyone for their congratulatory messages and her family for all their love, and support, as she journeyed to reach this milestone of professorship.
Pictured: Professor Raisuyah Bhagwan
Waheeda Peters
