African Journal of Higher Education Community Engagement
The African Journal of Higher Education Community Engagement (AJHECE) focuses on Community Engagement (CE) as a core function of higher education and an emerging discipline. In comparison to teaching, learning and research in higher education, community engagement is a recently introduced and less-known core function of higher education in South Africa and other parts of the African continent. CE aims to advance the developmental role of higher education institutions, intended to contribute to community development and inculcate civic and social responsibilities in students. For the continent of Africa, the engagement of higher education institutions with communities is imperative if we are to address and challenge the problems of social injustice, poverty, corruption, unemployment, environmental degradation and epistemic injustice as examples of some of the almost insurmountable struggles confronting Africa. Please visit the About the Journal page for more information about the journal.
Rhodes University, Community Engagement Division
Copyright (c) 2025 Preliminary pages https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Grounded in place, connected to the world
Copyright (c) 2025 Claire McCann, Margie Maistry https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Community-based participatory research as a driver of social enterprise development
In recent years, South African universities have been called upon to address socio-economic challenges through forms of engaged scholarship that integrate teaching, research, and community partnership. Using a case study approach, this paper explores how a community-oriented student organisation at the University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein approached the academic facilitator and students of an entrepreneurship module with a request to help them become a viable and sustainable social enterprise as a means to combat unemployment and improve the graduate employability of its members. This request necessitated the formation of a community-university partnership (CUP) that employed community-based participatory research (CBPR) and participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) to support the development of a social enterprise. The partnership formed part of an experiential learning initiative embedded within entrepreneurship education at UFS. Through the use of CBPR and PALAR, the student organisation was assisted in identifying its strengths and weaknesses, and an action plan, based on a social enterprise business model canvas (SEMC), was designed to help the organisation achieve its goals. Findings reveal that engaging students in CBPR and PALAR through their partnership with the student organisation facilitated deep, experiential learning. The paper also reveals how collaborative knowledge production can generate mutual benefits for students, communities, and the institution.
service-learning and community engagement
Active Community Citizens through Engaged Scholarship for Sustainability
Copyright (c) 2025 Ekaete Benedict https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Carefully navigating the messiness of community-engaged feminist internet research
Community-engaged feminist internet research is often complex, as researchers navigate the needs of communities alongside institutional expectations to produce knowledge that meaningfully serves local digital realities. Rather than viewing this complexity—or 'messiness'—as a weakness, this paper argues that it is a productive and necessary dimension of rigorous, care-centred research. Drawing on two recent studies, the Feminist Internet Research Meta-Research Project and The Left Out Project, the article illustrates how methodological uncertainty, ethical negotiation, and shifting contextual conditions shape feminist internet research in practice. Embracing and making visible this messiness enables greater reflexivity, supports more inclusive and accountable knowledge-making, and strengthens the ethical foundations of engaged research. The paper concludes with three recommendations for navigating the complexities of community-engaged feminist internet research: practising ongoing reflexivity, building communities of practice, and grounding research in an ethics of care.
community-engaged feminist internet research
Copyright (c) 2025 Nyx McLean https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Language, relationality, and career guidance
The importance of career guidance in enabling learners to make informed decisions about their futures cannot be overemphasised. Learners in under-resourced schools often face limited opportunities for meaningful support, with English-only career guidance restricting comprehension and engagement. Guided by the RelationalContextual Career Framework (RCCF), this study explores how language and relational dynamics shape career guidance within a community-engaged servicelearning initiative involving Organisational Psychology honours students at Rhodes University. Learner focus groups were used to gather data from high school students, and reflections were used to gather data from career psychology honours students participating in a service learning programme. The results demonstrated that learner comprehension, confidence, and participation were significantly impacted by the use of language and relational strategies. Student reflections highlighted the importance of adapting theory to local contexts, integrating career construction and life-design principles, and navigating multilingual challenges. Students' professional adaptability, reflective practice and cultural responsiveness were further enhanced through service-learning experiences. Findings validate the RCCF as a useful framework for operationalising multilingual, relational, and Ubuntu-informed pedagogies, supporting equitable, socially responsible career guidance in under-resourced schools. Findings also suggest that the RCCF can inform institutional community engagement strategies, providing guidance for culturally responsive, relationally grounded, and ethically oriented service-learning programmes.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ntombifuthi Centurion Zwane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
South-south networks catalysing social responsibility in higher education
This article interrogates epistemic injustice in global development discourse, challenging dominant narratives that define progress through a singular lens. Drawing inspiration from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2009) caution against “the danger of a single story,” we explore how universities—often positioned as knowledge authorities—(re)perpetuate these injustices by privileging Western epistemologies in defining development. We argue for the recognition of diverse aspirations and culturally embedded understandings of the good life, as articulated by scholars such as Catherine Odora Hoppers, who critiques the systemic marginalisation of Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems. Anchored in the Knowledge for Change (K4C) Global Consortium, a Global South-led initiative in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), this article presents a conceptual and practical framework for decolonising research through the creation of regional CBPR training centres in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Using narrative inquiry, we reflect on our lived experiences as coordinators of these centres, analysing personal stories to uncover themes of cultural negotiation, institutional challenges, and transformative potential. We aim to demonstrate how these centres can serve as hubs for epistemic justice, fostering methodologies rooted in collaboration, equity, and contextual relevance. By embedding CBPR within higher education institutions in its training and research capacities, we envision a shift toward research led and sustained by the Global South, reframing development through cognitively diverse and participatory knowledge-making processes. Ultimately, we advocate for a pluralistic approach to development—one that honours multiple stories, cosmologies, and pathways to progress.
social responsibility in higher educaiton
Copyright (c) 2025 David Monk, Irma Alicia Flores-Hinojos, Mahazan Abdul Mutalib https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The African Knowledge Production Incubators
This paper addresses the enduring challenge of Eurocentric curricula in higher education, specifically detailing an initiative by African social work scholars to decolonise the social work curriculum. The African Knowledge Production Incubators (AKPI) project, stemming from Nelson Mandela University, University of KwaZulu Natal, Wits University, and Stellenbosch University, adopted a Participatory Action Learning Action Research (PALAR) methodology, inherently democratic and decolonial. Leveraging Zavala’s (2016) decolonial framework, the project established ‘incubation’ spaces where we came together to share and cocreate our African lived experiences through storytelling, collective sense-making, and reclaiming our narratives. This process fostered critical consciousness, personal cognitive liberation, and a clear embrace of Afrocentric perspectives, involving postgraduate students in similar processes in their own research. The project foregrounds the decolonisation of self, curriculum and research, demonstrating how storytelling, aligned with PALAR, can achieve decolonial outcomes within social work education. It aims to catalyse thoughtful conversations on integrating African selves within community, curriculum, and scientific inquiry.
Participatory Action Learning Action Research
Copyright (c) 2025 Nevashnee Perumal, Priscalia Khosa, Motlalepule Nathane, Veonna Goliath, Mbongeni Sithole, Nkqubela Aphiwe Ntloko, Dzunisani Euginea Baloyi, Crucial Mutambu, Tintswalo Novela, Brian Muvhali, Nokwanda Myende https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In this paper, I suggest that ‘SHAER: Storytelling for Health, Acknowledgment, Expression and Recovery’ can be reimagined as a critical service-learning initiative. This suggestion is based on trying to make sense of two unexpected outcomes of implementing a mental-health intervention for women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Makhanda, South Africa. I argue that while SHAER was initially conceived as a mental health intervention, it creates an open space characterised by mutual recognition in which participants appear to others—disclose their identity and reality—and develop a critical consciousness. Drawing on the unexpected centrality of forward-looking, agency-affirming narratives of motherhood, rather than backward-looking, victim or survivor-centred ‘trauma stories’, I propose that SHAER offers a model for transformative community engagement in higher education institutions in South Africa. In its barest form, SHAER can be seen as a platform for fostering relational agency, self-authorship, and solidarity through narrative exchange and recognition. As such, SHAER aligns with the aims of what Tania Mitchell calls critical service-learning and John Saltmarsh and Matthew Hartley call democratic civic engagement and offers a powerful model for embedding community engagement within the academic project.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lindsay Kelland https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Advancing Integrity and Social Justice through Faith-based Service Learning in Kiambiu, Kenya
The Franciscan School of the Institute of Spirituality and Religious Formation, Tangaza University, offers a course on peace, justice, and human rights during which students engage with the Kiambiu small Christian communities through five weeks of community engagement service learning from a faith based perspective to implement the theory they learn. The programme includes prayers, Bible study, and reflection on the factors affecting their lives and society. Both formative and summative assessments form the total grade for the course. A study was undertaken with the following objectives: to explore how students of the Franciscan school engage with members of the Kiambiu small Christian communities; to examine issues that affect the socio-economic lives of the Kiambiu small Christian communities; to evaluate socio-political issues that challenge the integrity of the Kiambiu small Christian communities, and to involve the Kiambiu small Christian communities in their rights for a just nation. The methodology for this study is the five-stage pastoral cycle, and the experiential educational theory was used as its framework. The programme targeted 17 small Christian communities with a population of 425. There were 28 students in total. The outcome of the community engagement reveals that both communities and students are enriched and transformed by the experience. The findings highlight that, through community engagement, the Kiambiu small Christian communities’ members work and transform their attitude towards justice, peace, and human rights, improve their economic status, and alleviate their standard of living by starting self-reliance income-generating projects, while the students are transformed intellectually and affectively.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sr. Margaret Aringo, Odhiambo Kevin Odongo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The concept of a just anchor institution emphasises the obligation of higher education institutions (HEIs) to contribute holistically to advance social justice in the local communities in which they are anchored, and can serve as a framework for HEI community engagement. Furthermore, within the higher education sector, community engagement initiatives can be positioned to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including those related to economic growth. SDG 8, in particular, is focused on decent work and economic growth. This paper explains how a South African university introduced a programme to promote inclusive economic growth through enterprise development and supplier development, utilising existing legislative frameworks to achieve this goal. The Masakhe Enterprise and Supplier Development Programme at Rhodes University encompasses economic, infrastructural, and educational components. A justice perspective on the concept of an anchor institution is used to analyse the project and the broader role of the Community Engagement Division, focusing on principles of creating shared value, accessibility, visibility, and empowerment. Data collection methods included interviews and documentation related to the project. A content analysis approach was used to analyse the data. The main findings of the study highlight the value of a just anchor institution framework for the holistic development of local communities in realising the SDGs. The case study also highlights the significance of a sustained relationship between the anchor institution and its local community, as well as how broad-based black empowerment legislation can serve as a source of funding for the inclusive economic development of small enterprises.
Copyright (c) 2025 Prof Noel J. Pearse, Thandiwe Matyobeni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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Copyright (c) 2025 Margie Maistry, Claire McCann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Peter Clayton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The university can be an enabler of positive transformation by engaging with various communities. By describing a methodological process followed in a doctoral study, this paper presents a participatory research approach with youth in a resourcepoor context to illustrate methodological pathways of inclusion. The paper also problematises the notion of social entrepreneurship and stresses the definitional challenges associated with the term. This is important to show the possibility of expanding the scholarly footprint of social entrepreneurship and universities’ important role and options in framing new approaches and methodologies within community university partnerships. A methodological primer is presented to show the methodological process, embedded in qualitative participatory research, that informed the study. The methodological process is rooted in the participants’ lifeworld and seeks to amplify local concerns and solutions. Community-university partnerships that respect aspirations and agendas of local communities inspired by collaborative, dialogical, transforming and respectful processes are identified in the paper as enablers of successful university-community engagements.
Copyright (c) 2025 Grey Magaiza, Geoffrey Mukwada, Jesse Lutabingwa, Jerit Dube https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Analysis of the Nine-Tenths Mentoring Programme’s role in decolonising higher education in Makhanda
This research critically examines the potential and limitations of the Nine-Tenths Mentoring Programme at Rhodes University as a tool for decolonising higher education and enhancing epistemological access for historically disadvantaged students in Makhanda, South Africa. Initiated in 2016, the programme targets Grade 12 learners from under-resourced, no-fee schools, aiming to increase their chances of entering higher education. While the programme has successfully improved Bachelor-level pass rates and local enrolment at Rhodes, this study argues that true access involves more than just university admission. Conducted in 2021, the study uses qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with former Nine-Tenths mentees at various levels of study, ranging from undergraduate to postgraduate. The paper explores how the programme facilitates epistemological access, defined as the ability to engage meaningfully with academic knowledge, and its role in the decolonisation of higher education. Findings reveal that while Nine-Tenths bridges the gap between secondary and tertiary education, students continue to face substantial challenges upon entering university, including socio-economic obstacles, language barriers, and feelings of alienation within a historically white institution. While the programme marks progress toward decolonisation, deeper institutional transformation is necessary to achieve epistemological equity and create a truly inclusive academic environment. This paper concludes with recommendations such as enhanced first year support systems, targeted socio-economic interventions, and curriculum reforms that embrace diverse epistemologies. By emphasising the need to move beyond mere access to ensure meaningful inclusion and success, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on decolonisation in South African higher education, and the urgent need for systemic transformation in historically exclusionary institutions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nigel Machiha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Margie Maistry, Claire McCann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In this article, I will reflect on the importance of two recent “South-South” exchanges organized by faculty and leadership from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay and Rhodes University in South Africa. I believe these encounters represent an innovative and much-needed alternative to collaborations where Global North voices are most prominent and Global South is reduced to an object of study. Finally, I identify five critical questions that emerged in these conversations for future South-South dialogues in the field: What is the Global South? Why should we have a dialogue? What should that dialogue look like? What are the main challenges for a South-South dialogue? What can the Global North learn from a South-South dialogue on community engagement?
Copyright (c) 2024 Matías G. Flores https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Introducing Community Engagement through Hospitality
The objective of this thought piece is to explore Nouwen’s notion of hospitality as a means of introducing participatory research, in particular community-based participatory research, to academics who may be interested in community engagement but have little or no experience in recent scholarly developments in the field. This includes knowledge democracy, social and epistemic injustice, and epistemic agency. The approach is not intended to replace well-established orientation processes but to engender interest in further orientation in participatory research.
Copyright (c) 2024 Darren Lortan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Re-imagining engaged scholarship in South Africa
This article represents a constructive disruption of the extant habits of mind associated with community engagement in South Africa. The constructive disruption is developed by applying a critical realist method placing emphasis on engaged transdisciplinary knowledge co-production processes. The argument that is developed suggests two plausible disruptions. The first disruption argues that it is possible to consider a second order form of methodological decision making using a concept labelled ‘critical epistemological selectivity’ as a mechanism to increase the armamentarium of engaged, transdisciplinary scholarship. The second disruption focuses on the real-world utility of the current ‘spirit’ of engagement – ‘social justice’ – in the face of increasingly complex global challenges. The article concludes by suggesting that second and third order perspectives could contribute to a more reflexive form of engaged scholarship that may be of benefit to both academe and its neighbouring communities.
Copyright (c) 2024 Christopher J. Burman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Overcoming Community Engagement Hurdles in South Africa's Private Higher Education
This paper focuses on the challenges and perceptions related to community engagement in private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. Community engagement is now considered equally important as teaching and learning, and research and innovation at universities. The Council on Higher Education expects formal engagement from both public and private higher education institutions. However, PHEIs face unique challenges such as resource constraints, conflicting priorities, lack of tradition, and differing perceptions of community engagement. The study used qualitative data collection methods, including desktop research and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with five academics from different PHEIs. The findings emphasised the need for PHEIs to develop strategies to build sustainable relationships with their communities despite these challenges.
Copyright (c) 2024 Flip Schutte https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reflections on an engaged research approach to understanding patient record-keeping systems in a local clinic in Makhanda
The taking and archiving of accurate record-keeping is an essential part of caregiving in health care. There is extensive evidence that record-keeping systems are affected by systemic problems that impact healthcare provision globally and in South Africa, particularly in public healthcare. Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) has been applied in healthcare settings to address these systemic challenges, including those related to record keeping, but not in South Africa. With participation being a critical element of HFE, a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) framework can but has not been used to understand and optimise systems such as those linked to record keeping. This reflection provides an overview of how an HFE approach was applied, using a CBPR framework to understand the challenges affecting patient record-keeping in a clinic in Makhanda. Specifically, it provides insights into how CBPR was applied and reflections on this experience from both the researchers’ and collaborators' perspectives. The importance of patience and flexibility, empathy, constant feedback and consultation and listening to collaborators' and participants' contributions emerged as important lessons. The community collaborator also experienced the process positively, where she emphasised the empowering experience of being able to help guide and facilitate research, which, in turn, revealed challenges that affected the daily running of the clinic. The collaboration using the CBPR approach was a practical framework for applying several HFE approaches to understand the challenges around record keeping.
Copyright (c) 2024 Kirsten Kingwill, Andrew Todd, Jonathan Davy, Siphosethu Pama https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring the synergies between intervention research and engaged research in South Africa
Engaged research is a space where collaborative work takes place with groups of people within a specific geographic area and special interests in relation to their wellbeing – this being understood as a community (Balls-Berry & Acosta-Pérez, 2017). Intervention research design is a dynamic process which involves researchers (based within universities), organisations and practitioners (Fraser et al., 2009; Rothman & Thomas, 1994). Furthermore, intervention research follows distinct stages, with collaboration at the core of each of these stages. Given that collaboration is a core theme for engaged research as well as the intervention research design process, the question arises if the intervention research design process could be considered a tool to promote engaged research. The aim of the following paper is to provide insight into how the intervention research design was used for the design and development of the Sihleng’imizi family intervention. The paper will look at how collaboration was a feature in each of the phases. A reflective discussion on the successes of collaborative work and how this may contribute to engaged research, as part of community engagement will be discussed.
Copyright (c) 2024 Jenita Chiba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Makhanda Education Summit, a convening of the basic sector in Makhanda, was called by Professor Sizwe Mabizela following more than a decade of deliberate, intentional and collaborative intervention in schools in Makhanda focused on improving learner performance. The Summit sought to be an inclusive space for members of the education sector in the city of Makhanda, and in doing prioritized ensuring that its delegates included representatives from early childhood development centres, primary schools, high schools and non-profit organisations that work in the education sector. In doing so, the Summit has been situated within the context of the city’s education sector as a crucial co-created reflection point by the community on the development of the education sector following its gradual upliftment through engaged partnership. In addition, it served as a strategic space to collectively identify key goals to shape the future of education in Makhanda and map out the shared pathway towards building a city of education excellence. Explored through the lens of Social Movement Theory, the presenters assess how the Summit’s hyper-local approach to bringing together school leaders and educators after impactful engagement over several years enabled the development of an organic community-driven social movement to emerge. The Summit demonstrated the necessity and endless potential of collaboration for common good, and the essential role of higher education institutions in driving community development. The paper will provide an overview of the decade's journey towards convening the Summit, reflect on the strategic approaches taken to mobilise buy-in and build a common purpose within the city’s stakeholder network, and share some of the key outputs that will undoubtedly inform the work of the invested stakeholders for the years to come.
Copyright (c) 2024 Sisesakhe Ntlabezo, Ashley Westaway https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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University engagement as local economic development
Universities engage with their communities through a plethora of approaches. One largely neglected form of engagement is the contribution of the university to local economic development. Empirical studies on the economic impact of universities in Africa have been significantly lower compared to the global North. However, this is not because universities in Africa are not contributing to the economic development of their immediate and extended regions. This paper aims to contribute to closing that gap through an empirical study of a newly established South African university within a secondary city characterized by high unemployment, a declining economic sector, but with a growing staff and student body and high university expenditures. The analysis uses a Keynesian-type multiplier impact model, to demonstrate that the university contributes a minimum of R2 billion to the local municipality, which translates to about 19% of the district GDP. This contribution is made through a combination of direct and indirect activities of the university and its constituencies – staff, students, visitors, and local businesses. The paper concludes that intentional engagement policies and practices from the universities coupled with active commitments from local or provincial government and other external stakeholders could ensure the university serves a stronger anchoring and developmental role within the city and region.
Copyright (c) 2023 Samuel Fongwa, Stewart Ngandu, Bongiwe Mncwango https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Community Engagement as Publishable Scholarship
The structures that evaluate what counts as novel and fundable knowledge have evolved over a long timeline, primarily driven by traditional forms of explorative, descriptive and critical analysis research. Community Based Participatory Research does not always fit evaluation and funding structures as comfortably as these models of research which are more established in the global academy, and requires careful navigation of, and some further fine-tuning to, review and accreditation processes, to stand beside more traditionally accepted scholarly practices in being readily recognised as producing original scholarly knowledge.
Copyright (c) 2023 Prof Peter Clayton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2023 Prof Sizwe Mabizela, Vice-Chancellor, Rhodes University https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
For a number of years, community-based service learning (CBSL) has been a key element of the Community Psychology module in the Master’s programme for training psychologists at Rhodes University. In 2022, CBSL was consolidated to become central to the whole programme, with a focus on providing services in a partnership with the Assumption Development Centre (ADC). After introducing a model showing how students gradually move from sensitisation to social justice issues at undergraduate levels towards conscientisation as postgraduates, this paper will reflect on the interface between the professional training programmes and the community-based partnership with the ADC. Following a brief background about the partnership’s development, we describe the structure of the CBSL and its integration into the curricula. We provide evidence of its impact on both the firstyear master’s students, and the second year Counselling Psychology Interns. These data draw from the trainee psychologists’ reflections, as reported in the Rhodes Psychology Clinic 2022 Annual Report; and the Intern Psychologists’ reflections, integrated into the 2022 ADC Counselling Hub Annual Report. A thematic analysis of the reflections illustrates the commonalities in the accounts of learning, as well as the deepened insights and shifts evident in the accounts. The reported reflective learning is then considered both practically and theoretically, with recommendations for further development.
Copyright (c) 2023 Professor Jacqui Akhurst , Nqobile Msomi, Anneliese Maritz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Higher education institutions have historically enabled and aided epistemicide, or the marginalisation, annihilation and devaluing of the knowledge of those beyond university walls. Twenty-first century universities therefore face the important task of transforming teaching and research in ways that broaden epistemic access, incorporate various knowledge systems, and ensure local relevance. Here, academic feminism, especially postcolonial feminism, and community engagement may provide a way forward, as both projects serve to deconstruct the binary between ‘knower’ and ‘non-knower’, contributing to epistemic justice. In isolation, however, these projects have not yet made enough progress in pursuit of university transformation. This essay offers a preliminary exploration of the connections between community engagement and postcolonial feminism, and the ways in which a mutually beneficial relationship between the two may enhance each project's contribution to epistemic justice. It brings together literature on feminism and community engagement, linking this literature to the ideas of postcolonial feminism. Focus on postcolonial feminism specifically emerges from the recognition that universities do not only need to transform, but also decolonise. Ideas put forward in this writing are interspersed with my subjective memories and recollections of my lived experiences, spanning two universities and continents.
Copyright (c) 2023 Claire McCann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Critical community engagement and the Latin American ethos: contributions to a Global South dialogue
The advancement of the concept of community engagement as a reference for university-society relations invites us, particularly those of us from the Global South, to reflect on our history and traditions. We understand community engagement as a disputed concept throughout history that can potentially house an ethical-political-pedagogical project that questions traditional university models. Observing its historical development and tensions in Latin America invites us to go beyond particular projects, giving an account of a regional movement that continues to inspire university reform processes connected to projects for transforming society. This article presents the history that constitutes the Latin American community engagement ethos, its prevalence in critical community engagement, and some experiences that illustrate a living paradigm still under construction that responds to the continent’s needs. It concludes with an invitation to review the critical traditions of community engagement and promote the dialogue of experiences in the Global South.
Copyright (c) 2023 Matías G. Flores, Romina Colacci, Agustín Cano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0