Repairing epistemic harms through wellbeing in South African universities

Bibliographic Data

ID21556429
AuthorsNuraan Davids (0000-0002-7588-5814, Stellenbosch University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume45
Issue4
Pages969-983
Publication date2026-05-19
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHigher Education Research & Development (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0729-4360 • E-ISSN: 1469-8366
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07294360.2025.2580617
OpenAlexW4416056405
LanguageEN
References cited19

Widely-reported movements, such as the ‘Rhodes must fall’, and ‘fees must fall’ campaigns in post-apartheid South Africa reflect a deeply disenfranchised and disillusioned generation of students. The daily harms which some students suffer because of who they are perceived to be are often scooped into imposed collective identities. Such collective identities so embed themselves into societal imaginaries that there is little regard or curiosity about how oppression or dehumanisation is experienced in university settings. As a result, universities persist in talking about ‘black student experiences’, as if these are homogenous. Such conceptual aggrandisement simultaneously collectivises and reduces an interest in the actual harms experienced by these students, and hence, an unawareness and unpreparedness to repair. The interest of this paper, therefore, is threefold: first, to look at epistemic harms, how and when they unfold; second, to consider what epistemic reparations are and to whom they apply. Third, while epistemic reparations can become a powerful educational tool to gain deeper understandings of how these harms affect human relationships, it might be as important, however, for universities to focus on the cultivation of epistemic wellbeing as a framing ethos

Higher education · Power structure · Qualitative research · African cultural and philosophical studies · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies

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