26th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
20-23 AUGUST 2024

NAVIGATING INTERNATIONALISATION IN CHALLENGING TIMES

SPEAKER BIO

Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela

Prof. Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela is the Associate Chancellor and Vice-Provost for Global Affairs & Strategies and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her BA in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.  She received a Master’s in Labor & Industrial Relations and a Ph.D in Educational Policy Studies, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to her current appointment, she served as the Assistant Dean for International Studies and Professor of Higher Education at Michigan State University.

Among her various honors, Prof. Mabokela is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Education, honoris causa, from the University of Pretoria (South Africa), a former Fulbright New Century Scholar, as well as a Fulbright International Education Administrators program participant in France. Prof. Mabokela’s research seeks to understand experiences of marginalized populations and aims to inform and influence institutional policies that affect these groups within institutions of higher education. Her research centers or has centered on the examination of three interrelated themes: 1) organizational change and organizational culture in higher education; 2) gender in higher education; and 3) higher education in transitional societies. She has devoted a significant part of her career over the past two decades studying these education issues in South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Ghana, Egypt, and Pakistan among others. Over the course of her career, she has secured more than $27 million in external funding to support various education and research initiatives.

She is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of seven books and has published extensively in academic journals including Comparative Education Review, American Educational Research Journal, the Africa Education Review, and The Review of Higher Education, Comparative Education, Higher Education, among others.