Bianca Masuku

Bianca Masuku is a Junior Research Fellow in the Academic Staff Development cluster at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Her work focuses on open education, social justice and student partnership approaches in higher education, with particular attention to the role of student voices in knowledge production and educational transformation.

As part of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative within CILT, Bianca conducts research on open textbook development at UCT and explores the intersections between open education and social justice in higher education. Her work includes supporting open textbook initiatives, contributing to institutional and broader open education advocacy, and building awareness and engagement around open educational practices and resources.

Her recent research within the DOT4D initiative has focused on student co-creation in open textbook production and broader student partnership approaches in open education. She is particularly interested in practices and strategies that support meaningful student participation in open education research, implementation and advocacy, as well as the development of collaborative open education networks within and beyond the university.

In addition to her research work, Bianca supports teaching activities within the department and contributes to the facilitation of the Designing with AI short courses offered through CILT.

Bianca is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UCT. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and Psychology, and a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology, from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her broader research interests include gender, sexuality, youth and health, with a focus on how young people experience, interrogate and shape the worlds around them. Her doctoral research explores understandings of tuberculosis in Khayelitsha through a youth-centred community engagement project that brings together art, youth education, visual media and TB science through participatory and dialogic approaches led by young people.