Shanali Govender

Shanali Govender is a Senior Lecturer in Academic Staff Development at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town, where she has worked since 2013. Her role sits at the intersection of teaching, professional development and research through her teaching practice, professional development activities and research, she focuses on fostering meaningful, connected approaches to teaching and learning in South African higher education.

She has taught on the Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Technology and co-convened the programme for several years. She currently co-convenes the Postgraduate Diploma in Blended and Online Learning (BOLD), guest teaches on the Master’s in Higher Education Studies and the Master’s in Educational Technology, and supervises postgraduate students across these programmes.

Beyond formal teaching, Shanali designs and facilitates a range of professional development initiatives for academic staff across UCT, including workshops, seminars, teaching circles and short courses tailored to the needs of faculties and departments. She also contributes to the Tutor Development Project, including development programmes for tutors, postdoctoral fellows and emerging academics. Her work includes collaboration with faculties on online and blended course design, curriculum development, assessment and pedagogic strategy, and the support and development of tutors, teaching assistants and contract lecturers.

Shanali holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics from UCT and is currently completing a PhD through UCT’s School of Education. Her research interests include the casualisation of academic work, online learning design, assessment as social practice, equity in higher education, and the role of AI in co-creative learning design. Her work is grounded in the realities of teaching and learning within unequal and resource-constrained contexts, with a particular focus on how precarity shapes educational experiences for both students and staff.

Her recent scholarly contributions include editorial work on the collaborative research projects Cases on Open Learning and Learning Design Voices. Across her teaching and research, Shanali is committed to collaborative, practice-oriented approaches that engage critically with questions of social justice, pedagogy and structural change in higher education. Her publications and scholarly contributions can be viewed on Google Scholar.