Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers, Incumbent: DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Development Education, Unisa, and PASCAL Board member gave a public lecture on 27 May at the University of Malta.

Professor Hoppers spoke about emancipation in a bid to wipe out oppression, both in people’s everyday lives and also connected to global systems.  “My vision centres around the democratisation of democracy through cognitive justice, a new theory of non-violence which goes beyond statist dreams,” says Prof Catherine Odora Hoppers.

The key theme of the lecture is related to Professor Hopper’s work as SARChI Chair funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation in South Africa, where she introduces “a new pedagogy in academic research and citizenship education. This takes development, and the acute lessons drawn from it, as a pedagogic field, and human development as the goal”.

The lecture was organised by the Malta Review of Educational Research, the Critical Institute and the Faculty of Education. Her address was entitled “Change and Transformation in the Knowledge Production Paradigms: A Global Perspective”.

Read more about Professor Odora Hopper's lecture on the UNISA site http://www.unisa.ac.za/news/index.php/2016/06/transformation-in-the-knowledge-production-paradigm/ including this very positive response from Professor Carmel Borg, Faculty of Education, University of Malta:

What we witnessed is a life-time project that is informed by the understanding that the promoter of hope is working towards a world that is not. Pedagogy of hope is utopian as much as it is rooted in the concrete now and the historical then. It is transformative of the future as much as it is critical of the past and present. Hope is about countering the pervasiveness of multiple oppressions as well as challenging the manipulations of reality that fabricate consent, generate contradictions and lead to states of false consciousness among people. It is also about resisting the ideology of self-reliance, individualism and  social darwinism. Ultimately, hope is about delivering worlds that can be; the proliferation of genuine democracies based on authentic inclusions that defy and subvert the dictates of the colonial, invasive and domesticating marketplace to reclaim empathy, honesty, integrity, love, dialogue, solidarity, community, and collectivity. It is within this vision of possibility that I frame your lecture, your tireless quest to enable persons and communities who are systematically and systemically silenced and marginalised and your reconciling of guerilla tactics with healing, all happening with doors closed and within close range of the oppressor.

...It is clear that genuine dialogues cannot materialize unless power relations are reinvented, faith in the voiceless is reclaimed, the pedagogical becomes eithical and the popular and scientific inform each other. Yes, cognitive justice, your claim to transformation, is the way forward to healing.

Footnote from Leone Wheeler:

I had the joy of meeting Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers in person at the recent PASCAL International Conference on Learning Cities . in Glasgow. I heard her speak passionately about “The Rural and the City: Disenfranchisements or Co-determinants in the 21^st Century”. Professor Hoppers challenged PASCAL as a global organization to continue to uncover and support what has made “resilient” societies world-wide and to examine ourselves as an organization to find out whether we have something different to say to these societies.

I persuaded Professor Hoppers to share the following photo taken at the Centre for Education Policy Development’s 10^th Anniversary in 2003. It is a real honor to have Professor Odora Hoppers on the PASCAL Board to continue to challenge the thinking of the organization.

Sitting: (from left) Mr John Pampallis (then Director of the Center For Educational Policy Development, and then Former Advisor to the Minister of Higher Education and Training until last year when he Retired. Mr Nelson R. Mandela (former President of South Africa and Founder of the Centre for Education Policy Development), Dr Blade Nzimande (then Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education and since 2009 – Minister of Higher Education and Training, South Africa).

Standing - Members of the Board of Trustees: Prof Linda Chisholm (adviser to the Ministry of Basic Education, South Africa), Prof Catherine Odora Hoppers (former Deputy Director, Centre for Education Policy Development, and now Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Chair in Development Education)  and Ms Shirley Mabusela (Former CEO of the Human Rights Commission, now Chairman of the Council of the University of Venda South Africa).