We have three keynote speakers:
Achille Mbeme
Professor Achille Mbembe, born in Cameroon, obtained his Ph.D in History at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989 and a D.E.A. in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris). He was Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, New York, from 1988-1991, a Senior Research Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., from 1991 to 1992, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania from 1992 to 1996, Executive Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) in Dakar, Senegal, from 1996 to 2000. Achille was also a visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001, and a visiting Professor at Yale University in 2003. He has written extensively in African history and politics, including La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (Paris, Karthala, 1996). On the Postcolony was published in Paris in 2000 in French and the English translation was published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 2001. In 2015, Wits University Press published a new, African edition. He has an A1 rating from the National Research Foundation.
Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan started work in education as a Humanities teacher in Victorian technical schools. She subsequently moved to the Access Skills Project Team in the Curriculum & Research branch of the Victorian Department of Education, working with teacher action research around questions of literacy, numeracy and social justice. She then co-led the Victorian School Improvement Plan, engaging teachers, parents and students in School Self-Evaluation across the state. After gaining her PhD, Marie moved to the university sector, with stints at Deakin, Central Queensland, Canberra, University of South Australia (where she had a five year term as Dean) and Victoria Universities. She is now an honorary Professor at VU, an Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia and Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She has researched and published on democratic and participatory research, curriculum, teacher education and social injustice in education.
Richard Tabulawa
Prof Richard Tabulawa graduated from the University of Botswana with a BA (Humanities) degree in 1985 having majored in English and Environmental Science. The following year (1986) he graduated from the same institution with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE). He taught briefly at Swaneng Hill School, Serowe before joining the University of Botswana in 1987 as a Staff Development Fellow (SDF). In 1989 he graduated from the University of Manchester (UK) with a MEd (Curriculum Development). In 1992 he enrolled with the University of Birmingham (UK) graduating in 1995 with a PhD in Education. Since then he has been lecturing at the University of Botswana where he served as Head of Department between 1996 and 2000 and Dean of the Faculty of Education between April 2009 and May 2015.
He was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 1998 and to that of Associate Professor in 2008. Richard has published articles in a number of world-class journals, which include Comparative Education, International Journal of Educational Development, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Globalisation, Societies and Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Higher Education, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, and many others. He also has a number of book chapters and a book entitled Teaching and Learning in Context: Why pedagogical reform fails in sub-Saharan Africa published by CODESRIA in 2013. A number of these publications are prescribed readings in universities in the USA, Britain, South Africa, Sweden, Denmark etc.