Dr Glenda Cox: Principal Investigator & UNESCO Chair in Open Education and Social Justice

Glenda  is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. Her portfolio includes curriculum projects, 'teaching with technology' innovation grants, open educational resources and staff development. She holds the UNESCO Chair in Open Education and Social Justice (2021–2024). She has an NRF 'C' rating and is recognised as being an established researcher in the field of open education. She is passionate about the role of open education in the changing world of higher education. Her current research includes analysing the role of open textbooks for social justice. 

Michelle Willmers: Publishing and Implementation Manager

Michelle has a background in academic and scholarly publishing and has worked in scholarly communication initiatives since 2008. Prior to that, she worked as an academic journal editor and publishing manager. She was a senior team member in the Shuttleworth Foundation Open Educational Resources initiative, Programme Manager of the IDRC Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme, and Project Manager of the OpenUCT Initiative. She was also the Curation and Publishing Manager of the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project from 2015 to 2018.

Bianca Masuku: Junior Research Fellow

Bianca is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UCT. Her research background and varied research experiences fuel her more recent interests in open education, open educational resources, and open textbooks and social justice with a keen interest in the inclusion and recognition of student voices. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and Psychology and a Master's in Social Anthropology from the University of Witwatersrand. Her work has revolved around gender, sexuality, youth and health, with a great interest in what how young people experience, interrogate and contribute to the worlds around them. Her doctoral work explores understandings of TB in the township of Khayelitsha through a youth-based community engagement project that brings art, youth education, visual media, and TB science into an interactive and dynamic dialogue driven by the perspectives of young people.