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Lucia Thesen
University of Cape Town
Lucia Thesen is an associate professor emerita in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. She has an enduring interest in writing and the politics of knowledge-making, having worked in the academic literacies field of practice at the University of Cape Town for over 30 years. Teaching and research in this context have been over-determined by approaches that work around what Lillis and Scott call ‘identify and induct’ principles. Lucia is interested in alternatives that challenge the hegemony of the way research writing and knowledge-making congeal in the imaginary of the formal archive. Her most recent publication is ‘Knowledge-making from a postgraduate writers’ circle: A southern reflectory’ (2014, Multilingual Matters).
Talk Information:
Knowledge-making from a postgraduate writers’ circle: A southern reflectory
April 4, 2025 | 9:00 AM
This talk is about my recent publication, ‘Knowledge-making from a postgraduate writers’ circle: A southern reflectory’ (2024, Multilingual Matters), a reflection arising from years of participation, mainly as facilitator, in a writers’ circle for postgraduate scholars from different disciplines who come to share their work-in-progress. The book foregrounds the epistemic messiness of the circle (and of all research writing) to widen and deepen possibilities for academic writing and its relationship to knowledge-making. The talk shares aspects of this deep ethnographic dive into the life of the circle, embracing writing as a method of inquiry, traveling with concepts such as surface tension and other ‘watery’ concepts to feel for writing’s emergent qualities in both pedagogy and research.