Associate Professor Kasturi Behari-Leak

Dr Kasturi Behari-Leak is Associate Professor: Higher Education Studies and Dean of the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her PhD focused on a Critical and Social Realist account of the interplay between structure, culture and lecturers' critical agency in a contested global South context. As Director of Academic and Professional Staff Development in the Centre for Higher Education Development at UCT, I am passionate about working with academics’ critical agency at all stages of their career trajectories to support, enhance, deepen and transform the way teaching and learning is conceptualised and practised in HE. She teaches on professional development interventions for academics across the trajectory from new to established, as well as post graduate programmes in higher education studies. As co-chair of the Curriculum Change Working Group focusing on decolonisation of the curriculum, she led many engagements and has published in the field of higher education studies and decolonising pedagogies/ decolonising the curriculum.

She is President of the International Consortium of Educational Development (ICED). She was President of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa and currently convenes its University Staff Doctoral Programme. She leads a national collaborative project on academic staff development and serves on the research advisory committee of the World Universities Network. She serves on editorial boards and advisory groups globally and is part of several national and international research consortia, focused on HE.

My research interests include higher education studies, curriculum change, critical realism, critical professional development, social realism, critical agency, decolonial knowledge and pedagogical practices, and critical leadership. I have published in the above fields and more recently, in decolonising pedagogies/ decolonising the curriculum. I have supervised PhD, Master’s and Honours students in higher education studies, to completion.

Recent publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kasturi_Behari-Leak2/publications