Bongi joined the Language Development Group in 2002 after completing her Masters in Applied Language Studies. Her research interests include writing and the formation of a disciplinary identity, multilingual interventions in various learning contexts as well as the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate studies. Bongi completed her PhD in 2012. In this project she explored the transition experiences of a group of English second language (ESL) students who graduated from Social Science disciplines and registered for degrees in the disciplines of Law and Marketing. She was interested in the implications of this transition for the discipline-specific literacy practices with which they engaged at a postgraduate level. Her study focused on how the epistemological orientations of their undergraduate majors came to inform the ways in which they (re)constructed their disciplinary identities and the resultant impact of this process for their engagement with the key genres of their new disciplines.

Bongi is currently involved in two longitudinal research projects. The first is an interdisciplinary project based in the Academic Development Programme in CHED. This project, which is headed by Rochelle Kapp and Robert Prince, explores the factors that facilitate or hinder the progress of the 2008 National Senior NSC students in the course of their undergraduate studies. The second project, which she is conducting with Lesley Greenbaum in the Law faculty, is entitled "The Development of Legal Academic Writing Skills in Novice Law Students in the Academic Development Programme in Law". The aim of this project is to determine the instructional strategies which will best support the acquisition of legal writing skills by novice law students in an extended curriculum programme.

Her main teaching is on the academic literacy courses 'Language in the Humanities' and ‘Academic Literacy in the Humanities'. She has also taught on academic literacy courses in the Health Sciences; in the School of Health and Rehabilitation and on the MBChB programme. She is also involved in tutor training in the Law faculty's Writing Centre and facilitates workshops for students on the Masters' Programme in Maternal and Child Health.