Associate Professor Abongwe Bangeni

I am Associate Professor in Language Development in the Academic Development Programme (ADP) in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) faculty at the University of Cape Town.

My strengths as an academic literacies specialist lie in teaching and curriculum development at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and in staff development across faculties. Drawing on a critical approach to literacy and genre analysis and working within the principles of Academic Literacies, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Genre Theory, I have published on writing and identity, multilingualism for learning, black English additional language students’ language attitudes and their engagements with disciplinary discourses within key transitions from school to university and from undergraduate to postgraduate studies. I am co-editor of the book Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education: Access, Persistence and Retention which forms part of the ‘Understanding Student Experiences of Higher Education’ series published by Bloomsbury (2017). 

Over the past ten years I have become increasingly interested in the nexus between writing and students’ reading practices within disciplines, arguing that the focus on writing in Higher Education research has overlooked reading as a key literacy practice. My post-doctoral research reflects this focus, with my research projects exploring students’ experiences with reading and the place for reading within the disciplines. I was a Mandela Mellon Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University in 2013, and my research during this time explored black students’ engagements with reading the legal case, a genre of power within the discipline of Law. My postgraduate supervision is mainly within the School of Education, and includes MA and PhD projects which explore a range of topics in the area of Academic Literacies.

See my publications here:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bongi-Bangeni     https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=DOQQBBgAAAAJ&hl=en