Position
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sustainability Research Unit
Contact Information
https://nmu.crtdev.co.za/profiles/shashi-cullinan-cook/
Location
Nelson Mandela University (George Campus) Madiba Rd, Glenwood AH, George, 6529
I am a postdoctoral research fellow based at the Sustainability Research Unit at Nelson Mandela University. The focus of my postdoctoral research is on education for sustainability transformation.
My recent research has focused on critical pedagogy, social inequality and decoloniality in higher education in South Africa and the ‘Global South’. My doctoral thesis in Education used student co-research and multimodal methods to understand the relationship between students’ knowledges and curriculum content. Through this work I became conscientised to the enmeshment of social and ecological injustices.
I co-edited a book with Brenden Gray, Tariq Toffa & Amie Soudien, called Standing items: critical pedagogies in South African art, design and architecture (2019). I have a chapter currently under review in a Bloomsbury series on Gender and Education.
I was the Managing Editor of the SOTL in the South journal from 2017 to 2019. This is an open-access and double-blind peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to fostering dialogue and research on teaching and learning in higher education in, or about, the global South.
Due to my cross-disciplinary research focuses, I have presented at diverse conferences run by the South Africa Visual Art Historians (SAVAH), the Design Education Forum of South Africa (DEFSA), the Visual Identities in Art & Design (VIAD) research centre, the Garden Route Interfacing Network (GRIN network), and SOTL in the South.
While completing my PhD, I was a research assistant for the South African Rurality in Higher Education (SARiHE) project which was jointly run by UJ, Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, and the Universities of Bristol and Brighton in the UK. The student co-researchers documented their prior learning in rural areas and their experience as university students, as well as how they negotiated the transition to higher education” (http://sarihe.org.za/)
During my years completing Masters in Art History and Visual Culture at the UCKA Rhodes, I was a junior lecturer and tutor. From 2010 onwards, I taught part-time at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA), University of Johannesburg (UJ) - in the departments of Visual Art, Multimedia, Architecture, Graphic Design, and Jewellery Design and Manufacture. I have supervised Honours, BTech and Masters students and was an external examiner for the Critical Studies (interdisciplinary) module at the Greenside Design Center in Johannesburg, South Africa (2015, 2016 and 2017).
My interest in pedagogy led to my attendance of the SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning) for Social Justice discussion groups at UJ, and to my consequent registration for a PhD in Education. I also attended the Southern African Universities Learning and Teaching (SAULT) forum meeting in Lesotho in 2017.
My postdoctoral research focuses on the conceptualisation of sustainable futures at the George Campus of Nelson Mandela University, so while I am not currently teaching, I am invested in the futures of campus stakeholders and the effect that campus culture has on teaching and learning environments. The practice of transgressive learning (t-learning) seems sensible for fostering a longterm 'pluraversalising' of university activities and worldsenses.
I am currently involved in the Dunes and People project as researcher and resident of Sedgefield, which is creating opportunities for outreach (and inreach).
Cullinan Cook, S. (in review). Dr Mama Shashi: paradigms and praxis for personal-as-professional transformation. Book chapter commission for Bloomsbury Gender and Education series.
