A Better World on the Other Side: A Few Lessons from Teaching in a Pandemic
Bettina Ng'weno
Thursday, September 9th
9-9:45 am
Description
At the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, we were struck by the glaring inequalities made visible by Covid 19. At the university level, inequalities among students, faculty, and staff as well as between universities and regions and of course throughout the pipeline to university. In light of this, many people also dreamed that another world was possible and that if there was one thing we could do with this pandemic, it was to build a better world on the other side. None of us imagined we would still be stolidly within the problem today. But can we now imagine a better world? And what would it mean for teaching and university education more generally? How would it make us rethink how and what we teach going forward? This talk explores this rethinking through reflecting on personal lessons learned for and from teaching during the pandemic and thinking forward to teaching back in person and hopefully one day post-pandemic teaching.
The recording includes the SITT Welcome Remarks from Andy Jones and Meggan Levitt. The keynote begins at 14:30.
Access the chat from the live talk.
About the Keynote Speaker
Bettina Ng’weno works on issues of space, property, social justice, citizenship, cities, states, race and ethnicity within Latin America, Africa and the Indian Ocean region. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and a Master’s degree also in Anthropology from Stanford University and have a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science and Management from the University of California, Davis.
Dr. Ng’weno is an associate professor in African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the chair of the Designated Emphasis. She a recipient of the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching (2020) as well as the Graduate Studies Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentoring Award (2020).
She was a co-director of the Mellon Research Initiative Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds at the University of California Davis. The process of reconceptualizing Indian Ocean worlds through new approaches and methodologies, as well as new perspectives and stories of being, is highlighted in her 2020 edited volume Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (Routledge).
In 2020 she also published the edited volume, Developing Global Leaders: Case Studies from Africa (Palgrave), that examines the experience and struggles of African business, academic, and government leaders in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania.
At the moment, Dr. Ng’weno is finishing Growing Old in a New City, a book on the changing temporality and spatiality of the city of Nairobi from the perspective of long-term residents. Working from personal, familial, ethnographic and archival history and experience of Nairobi, in both her academic writing and creative film project, Last Dance in Kaloleni (https://lastdanceinkaloleni.co.ke/ ) she brings to life a Nairobi rarely talked about centered on the railways, the dreams and aspirations of long-term residents, music and dance, and the experience of the complicated changing dynamics of the city.
Recent publications:
- Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (https://www.routledge.com/Reimagining-Indian-Ocean-Worlds/Srinivas-Ngweno-Jeychandran/p/book/9780367344535 )
- Developing Global Leaders: Insights from African Case Studies (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030146054 ).
