orientation week, I walked in like a blank slate, a tabula rasa I had to colour and contour into. Anthropology made the strange familiar while making the familiar strange. Philosophy dismantledmy previously held beliefs and I surrendered: and so the walls crumbled. Psychology piquedmy cognitive, emotive and behavioral understanding - that of myself and the world at large. My first year was marked by cultivating my voice, which was encouraged by assessments and lectures who yearned me into critical thinking. This was accompanied by finding my way into the various institutional spaces. I was in awe of the host of resources at my disposal. The library, an arena of books, alongside computers and printing stations; a campus clinic offering health screening; a gym; various student communities; and the intercampus bus service all formpart of the vibrant support system. All of this was for me, for my convenience? A system designed to support me? Emerging from a less privileged background, this abundance flusteredmy mind. Once, as I was raving tomy mother about this,she said: “you have your foot in the door, do not look back”. Almost seven years later, having heeded my mother’s advice, I have successfully completed my masters degree in the department of Anthropology and Development studies. I am an incoming PHD student in the same department. I didn’t dare look back. Having some ‘foot on the door’, now is an apt time to reflect on what we have done and are doing in the reparative mission of correcting the harms our disciplines have caused (Smith, 1999). Below, we set out some of the activities we have initiated at the postgraduate level to create humane, decolonial and supportive spaces of epistemic engagement. • Recognising pluralities of knowledge: while we recognise the value of the classroom space as a space of knowledge sharing, we recognise there are multiple other ways to learn. As such, we regularly bring in authors, creatives and activists in the department to engage with our students. One such recent example is the South African icon, Professor of Practice, Makhosazana Xaba, who gave a talk on her isiZulu translation of Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” into isiZulu: “Izimpabanga Zomhlaba”. Although not a traditional academic, anthropologist or development practitioner, we bring in thinkers as Xaba to index knowledges and languages not often valued in the disciplines of Anthropology and Development Studies, even as a significant population of these linguistic and ethnic groups constitute interlocutors fromwhich human sciences research is extracted. Figure 3: Lead author with writing group participant, Magati Paulus Metlhape, at the debrief • Weekly peer-led writing and reading groups: The postgraduate writing workshop, namely “shut up and write”, takes place online on Thursdays, and on Friday in-person at the departmental seminar room. It is a platform wherein postgraduate students focus on their respective papers, engineering publications and peruse through literature. It is a space of collective silence (Pagis 2019) whilst anchoring and holding space for one another. The in-person sessions end in a debrief wherein each student shares what they did on that day. Some of these debriefs are characterised by remarks such as: “today was a bit slow for me, I read through literature, then got frustrated and resorted to marking, but that frustrated me too … I felt like crying”. Sometimes the small victories are detailed, such as “today I finally finished my literature review”. Another student’s elaboration was about a rough week she had had and how the session, while slow, helped her journal and put to words the 63 A Journey of Innovation
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