Merve Fejzula - Faculty Exchange Report 2025

UMSAEP Post-Trip Report: Outcomes and Achievements from Curriculum Development Visit to UWC

Merve Fejzula
Host Institution: University of the Western Cape (UWC)
Dates of Visit: 18 July to 4 August 2025

Overview

This visit to the University of the Western Cape (UWC), supported by a UMSAEP award, has successfully fulfilled the aims outlined in my initial proposal, centered on deepening pedagogical collaboration for the University of Missouri’s (UM) “Race and Politics in South Africa” course. Since 2022, I have been leading this course on behalf of the Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy, the History Department, and Black Studies. This course covers the history of apartheid and its end, evaluating the ongoing political complexities of South Africa’s move to a democratic dispensation. It brings a mix of 15-20 undergraduate and graduate students each year to Cape Town during UM’s winter intercession (typically the first ten days of January) and then continues across UM’s spring semester back in Columbia.

Since 2023, Matt Frierdich has joined me as a co-leader, and we are ready to implement the successful outcomes of my visit into the next iteration of this course, beginning in January 2026.Through robust engagement with UWC faculty, students, and administrators across multiple departments, I was able to build sustainable academic connections and lay the groundwork for future student exchanges and an ambitious new scheme for program growth. This report outlines how each of the four core objectives of the proposal were achieved and expands on some additional unexpected outcomes.

Objective 1: Deepening Faculty and Student Connections with UWC

Throughout the visit, I met with over a dozen faculty members, across the Departments of Historical Studies, Political Studies, and Anthropology, including affiliates at the Centre for the Humanities Research (CHR). These meetings took the form of both formal scheduled office visits and informal networking lunches. My aim was to put a personal face to the UM departments connected to our course and identify potential colleagues for future engagement.

From these conversations, I was able to secure commitments from the following UWC faculty members to serve as guest lecturers in future iterations of the course:

• Historical Studies: Koni Benson, Ciraj Rassool, Paolo Israel
• Anthropology: Kelly Gillespie
• Political Studies: Lindokuhle Mandyoli, Meshay Moses
• Centre for the Humanities (CHR): Patricia Hayes, Maurits von Bever Donker, Geraldine Frieslaar

In addition to meeting with faculty, I presented a chapter drawn from my book manuscript at the Centre for the Humanities, which offered the opportunity to meet with many more faculty and graduate students. The paper was well-received, and I have since been invited to take up a courtesy appointment as a permanent fellow within the UWC Historical Studies department. I am currently in talks with UWC and UM administrators to pursue this affiliation.

Objective 2: Building Pedagogical Reciprocity

As noted in the original proposal, one of the limitations of our course is that it takes place when UWC is out of session. By arriving at the start of winter term in July, I was able to experience campus in full swing. Administrative barriers kept me from being able to guest lecture in colleagues’ classes, as originally planned, but I was able to observe the teaching of colleagues such as Koni Benson and Lindokuhle Mandyoli – a small seminar and large lecture, respectively. This helped me to get an understanding of student dynamics across a variety of UWC classrooms, while also grounding me in the specifics of teaching to South African students that will serve as well in the future, since we hope to include UWC undergraduates as exchange students in our class beginning in 2028.

In conversations with colleagues, the mentorship of graduate students emerged as a consistent and urgent need. UWC colleagues are overextended with the amount of graduate advisees they supervise alongside their other obligations, while the students themselves are often underexposed to international research collaborations and experiences abroad. Therefore, my colleagues at UM and I agreed that the most fruitful intervention going forward would be to integrate UWC graduate students into our programming, as part of a reciprocal exchange of student mentorship and research support for graduate participation in our program.

Objective 3: Building a UM-UWC Student Experience

Following this insight concerning graduate mentorship and the desire to increase UM student contact with UWC students, I spent time inquiring with colleagues about prospective graduate students who might be interested in international exchange and collaboration to engage with UM students during the upcoming 2026 iteration of the “Race and Politics in South Africa” course. This initiative was met with strong interest from both UWC and UM colleagues and students, confirming our hypothesis that peer learning would add depth to the comparative insights students gain from the course.

As a result, I identified and secured participation from two UWC PhD students, Bongani Kona and Tammy-Lee Lakay. They have a strong academic record, a demonstrated interest in African diaspora studies, and excellent communication and pedagogical skills. Following the model of Kinder’s structure of its abroad programs, Kona and Lakay will serve as junior deans for “Race and Politics in South Africa.” In this role, they will accompany us as instructors during learning excursions in Cape Town, as well as lead a tour of the Iziko South African National Gallery (Kona) and an archives intensive at the Mayibuye Archives in UWC (Lakay).

Objective 4: Piloting an Exchange Program for Spring 2026

While we had initially conceived of an undergraduate exchange program, my conversations with UWC faculty led us to appreciate that a graduate exchange of some kind would be more immediately beneficial. Therefore, we have now designed Kona and Lakay’s participation as junior deans to extend into the spring sessions of “Race and Politics in South Africa.”

When UM students return from Cape Town in the spring, they begin work on intensive research projects on a topic of their choosing, related to the themes of the course. The course culminates in a public conference, where students present their original work and faculty serve as discussants. This year, we will be integrating UWC faculty as (virtual) discussants on student papers, as part of our efforts to strengthen bonds between the institutions.

While faculty will be joining virtually, for a week in late April, Kona and Lakay will be on campus at UM, where they will participate in the conference and experience a variety of research and professional mentorship sessions. There will be a dedicated panel for Kona and Lakay during the student conference, in which they will present chapters from their PhDs. My colleagues and I will also host an additional closed workshop session with Kona and Lakay, where they will have the opportunity to receive feedback on their current PhD manuscripts in depth. Beyond this, we plan to curate a series of meetings and professional development opportunities with UM colleagues and staff.

My colleagues and I have already begun preliminary logistical conversations with UWC and UM departmental contacts to coordinate travel and visa support. There is great excitement on both institutional fronts about this exchange, and it will be especially meaningful to allow UWC and UM students to conclude “Race and Politics in South Africa” with a final in-person encounter.

Additional Outcomes and Impact

Beyond the original objectives, several ancillary benefits emerged:

• Faculty Co-Publication Possibilities: Several UWC colleagues expressed interest in co-authoring future journal articles or co-editing thematic volumes with me. I will be submitting a chapter for an edited volume on African archives and print cultures edited by Koni Benson, to be published by Pluto Press, and I have been invited to take part in a research collaboration UWC has with the University of Brasília.

• Potential Future Collaborative Grant: A concept was informally discussed for a joint grant application to support reciprocal student mobility between UM and UWC beyond the pilot phase.

• Annual Distinguished Lecture: In conversation with Jay Sexton, Matt Frierdich, and Maurits von Bever Donker, we are looking to begin an Annual Distinguished Lecture to take place at UWC’s Iyatsiba Lab, during the time that we are in Cape Town in January. This would enrich the CHR’s programming, while also furnishing an opportunity for our students to meet the fellow UWC community even outside term time.

• Archival Fellowship: Each year, several students in the UM cohort express an interest in a lengthier stay in South Africa, while UWC faculty have expressed a strong interest in hosting students who would be able to assist with cataloguing archival materials in the Mayibuye Archives. We are currently working to develop a 3-month fellowship at UWC (our summer, their winter), where they would work alongside Geraldine Frieslaar, a UWC archivist, to process and digitize materials from the extraordinary UWC collections.

Conclusion and Next Steps

This UMSAEP-sponsored trip achieved all of its proposed objectives and yielded several valuable new partnerships. The foundations are now in place for a truly reciprocal, long-term exchange relationship between the University of Missouri and the University of the Western Cape, centered on the shared goal of educating students through historically grounded, globally engaged, and socially relevant pedagogy. Upon my return, I met with Matt Frierdich and Jay Sexton to begin executing the next phase of this initiative, including inviting UWC lecturers to Mizzou, onboarding the selected junior deans, and integrating UWC faculty into the next course cycle. I am deeply grateful to UMSAEP for making this possible and look forward to continued collaboration with UWC colleagues.