Stipendiat*innen

Mikhaila Steenkamp is a South African guest researcher based at Ruhr University Bochum for the 2024/2025 academic year. She holds a German Chancellor Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, is a Mandela Rhodes scholar (2022), and is a recipient of the University of Cape Town’s ‘Accelerated Transformation of the Academic Programme’ Fellowship (2021).

While teaching in South African high schools, South Korean middle schools, and the adult education sector in Argentina, Mikhaila became interested in how teachers can be best capacitated to empower their students, and to build bridges across cultures and social differences.

Her studies allowed her to explore these and other social justice-related questions, as did further work in South Africa: as a tutor and supervisor of student teachers, as a supporter of Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) through the NQT Project, and as a researcher at the NQT Project and the Equal Education Law Centre. Now at RUB, she is researching engagements with diversity in teacher preparation programmes, focusing on RUB's Master of Education.

Research interests

• Teacher agency and professionalisation
• Diversity research
• Education reform
• Asset-based and transformative pedagogies

Education