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Professor Rajani Naidoo

University of Bath

Rajani Naidoo is Professor in Higher Education Management at the University of Bath and was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 1.6, ‘Pathways to personal and public good: understanding access to, student experiences of, and outcomes from South African undergraduate higher education’.

Rajani has held a range of faculty and management positions in the UK and South Africa including in an institution which aimed to contribute to the transformation of higher education in apartheid South Africa. She is also Visiting Professor, Chair for Critical Studies in HE Transformation at Nelson Mandela University South Africa.

She is a past Honorary Secretary of the Society for Research in Higher Education and is on the Executive Editorial Board of the British Journal of Sociology and on the Research and Development Committee of the European Foundation for Management Development.

She co-edits the book series Global higher education (Palgrave/Macmillan) and African higher education dynamics (African Minds). Her research interests include public sector markets and new public management; trans-national higher education and global governance; higher education and international development and the changing identity and nature of student participation in higher education.

Read Rajani’s full profile

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Past Events

Select recent publications

  • Naidoo, R. (2018). The competition fetish in higher education: Shamans, mind snares and consequences. European Educational Research Journal, 17:5, 605-620
  • Tomlinson, M., Enders, J., & Naidoo, R. (Accepted/In press). The Teaching Excellence Framework: Symbolic Violence and the Measured Market in Higher Education.Critical Studies in Education.
  • Naidoo, R. and Ranchod, R (2018) Transformation, the State and Higher Education: Towards a Developmental System of Higher Education in South Africa in, Ashwin, P and Case, J.M.
    (Eds) Pathways to the Public Good: Access, Experiences and Outcomes of South African Undergraduate Education. Cape Town. African Minds
  • Enders, J. and Naidoo, R. (2018) Audit-market Intermediaries: Doing Institutional Work in British Research Intensive Universities. Studies in Higher Education.
  • Stockley, R. and Naidoo, R.(2017) What are Universities for? Newspaper Representations of Higher Education. Published online 1 November 2017. Higher Education Review
  • Brennan J,.Naidoo, R.,and Franco, M. ( 2017 ) From Academic Profession to Higher Education Workforce in Meira Soares,V. Teichler, U. and de Lourdes Machado-Taylor.M. (Eds) Challenges and Options: The Academic Profession in Europe . Dordrecht : Springer
  • Pringle, J. and Naidoo, R. (2016) Branding and the Commodification of Academic Labour in Barnett, R., Scott, P and Temple, P. (Eds) Public and Private Benefits of Higher Education: An Appreciation of the Work of Gareth Williams. London: IOE Press
  • Lomer, S Papatsiba, V. and Naidoo, R. ( 2016): Constructing a National Higher Education Brand for the UK: Positional Competition and Promised Capitals, Studies in Higher Education.DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2016.1157859
  • Naidoo, R. (2016) The Competition Fetish in Higher Education: Varieties, Animators, Consequences. Special Issue British Journal of Sociology of Education 37(1):1-10 .
  • Naidoo, R., Adriansen, H.K and Madsen, L.M ( 2015 ) Dynamic African Universities:
    Struggling for a transformational curriculum in apartheid South Africa in Adriansen, H.K; Jensen, H., Madsenin, L.M. Higher Education and Capacity Building in Africa: The Geography and Power of Knowledge Oxon: Routledge