“Trust” selected as HECU 11 conference theme 

 

By Judith Reynolds

 

Trust is a necessary condition for a meaningful education.

 

The theme for the Higher Education Close Up (HECU) conference, to be hosted at Rhodes University in July 2024 is ‘trust’ and mistrust. The conference is being organized jointly by the Centre for Postgraduate Studies (CPGS) and the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL).

 

As the conference organisers were reading around a range of topics from managerialism and plagiarism to AI and research ethics, a word kept popping up: Trust. Students and staff may struggle to know what and who to trust.

 

“This theme encourages reflections on our understanding of what higher education is for, how we relate to our students, community and each other, and how we build and disseminate knowledge that contributes to the public good,” say the conference organisers on the HECU site.

 

Prof Sioux McKenna believes that “trust is central to higher education, and in an era where HE is generally packaged as neutral skills training, we are concerned about the need to foreground the normative programme again.”

 

More information about the conference and abstract submissions can be found on the HECU 11 site. https://sites.google.com/ru.ac.za/hecu11/home

 

This will be the 11th Higher Education Close Up conference. It will take place between 3 and 5 July 2024. The conference is usually held every second year and alternates between being hosted in the UK and in South Africa. Rhodes University last hosted the HECU conference in 2012.

 

HECU conferences are focused on in-depth, “close up” research into Higher Education.