Anneke Butler is a lecturer in the School of Languages at the Vanderbijlpark Campus of the North-West University in the Subject Group: Critical and Analytical Thinking Skills (CATS). Her research straddles Descriptive Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Within Descriptive Linguistics she is interested in cognitive linguistic approaches (especially Construction Grammar) and is currently investigating the copula and passive constructions. As an applied linguist, she regularly presents writing workshops for post graduate students from different schools and entities at the NWU and she lectures Critical and Analytical Thinking where she also serves as the subject group leader.

Prof Gustav Butler is currently the director of Understanding and Processing Language in Complex Settings (UPSET), a research entity affiliated to North-West University’s School of Languages. His research falls within the Applied Language Studies sub-programme, one of the three sub-programmes within UPSET. His main research interests include the design of Academic Literacy interventions and determining the impact of such interventions on student success. His research further focuses on the development of academic writing, with specific reference to the writing difficulties experienced by post-graduate writers.  

Sebastiaan (Ian) Rothmann is a professor of Industrial Psychology and the director of the Optentia Research Unit at the North-West University (NWU). He completed a PhD in Industrial Psychology (1996) and is a rated scientist by the National Research Foundation. Ian’s research focus on work-related well-being (job demands/resources, personality, burnout, and work engagement; 2000-2010) moved towards sustainable employability (work capabilities, decent work, and flourishing; 2011-2024). His research was published in 262 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Ian is a fellow of the Society of the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology in South Africa and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

Chris van Rhyn holds a PhD (Music) degree from Stellenbosch University. He is an Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at NWU. Chris has been the Director of the research entity Musical Arts in South Africa: Resources and Applications (MASARA) since 2019. He has published articles in South African Music Studies, Musicus, Critical Arts, Musicology Australia, Perspectives of New Music, and the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, among others. Chris’s compositions have been performed locally and abroad, including Harvard University’s Paine Hall and at the World New Music Days in Johannesburg. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and has presented seminars at Harvard University (US) and the University of Lincoln (UK).

Tendayi C. Garutsa (PhD) is an Associate Professor in Sociology, Faculty of Humanities at North-West University, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Fort Hare. Her research focuses on gender, rural development, food security, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Garutsa has served as a National Research Funding Proposal Evaluator and was a post-doctoral fellow with the Climate Impacts Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement Programme in Africa under DFID and African Academy of Sciences. She has received several awards, including the 2022 Teaching Excellence and Top Senior Lecturer Researcher Awards at NWU. Her work, grounded in social justice, is widely published in areas such as feminist pedagogies, rural development, and gender.  

Prof Liandi van den Berg is a professor in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the North-West University, and director of the Technology Enhanced Learning and Innovative Training in South Africa (TELIT-SA) research entity. Prof Liandi is a core member of the NWU institution’s Digital Business Strategy team, facilitating the Digital Transformation process within the university. She is actively involved in the institutional AI Steering Committee, AI Hub, the institutional digital assessment task team and the NWU T&L Strategy task team to develop and review policies, procedures and guidelines as well as develop, implement and research AI and digital assessment practices. She is involved in the development and training of faculty on AI integration in teaching, learning and research and is currently researching the educational affordances of GenAI use for lecturers and students.  

Thandeka Mfinyongo is a musician born and raised in Nyanga East, Cape Town (South Africa). Her love and passion for the performing arts began at a young age in church. In 2017, she graduated with a Performer's Diploma in Music and an Advanced Diploma in African Music in 2018, both from the University of Cape Town. Mfinyongo specialises in two Xhosa musical bows: the uhadi (gourd/calabash bow) and the umrhubhe (mouth-bow). In 2020, she completed her Master’s in Music Performance at SOAS University of London, majoring in kora (a West African harp-lute). She is currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Rhodes University and lectures in African Music at North-West University. Mfinyongo was selected for a prestigious residency at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, where she further explored performance, instrument-making, and archival practices through collaborative research. Her musical contributions extend beyond performance; she has collaborated with renowned artists such as the late Dr Madosini and Dumza Maswana. Her dedication and talent have earned her recognition, including the Rhodes University Top 100 Award for Arts, Media, Culture & Society. She has performed at major events such as the Joy of Jazz, the National Arts Festival, the Folklore Festival, the Oluzayo Festival, and Resonance presented by NewMusicSA and the South African Strings Foundation. Mfinyongo commands a powerful stage presence and is an experienced vocalist and performer of the uhadi and umrhubhe. She draws inspiration from elder musicians like Madosini, with whom she studied to deepen her knowledge.

Thembinkosi Magagula is a classical singer, a junior lecturer in Western Classical Voice and Pedagogy, and a DMus candidate in performance at North-West University, under the tutelage of Prof Santisa Viljoen. She obtained an MMus in Applied Vocal Studies at the Maastricht Conservatorium, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands under the tutelage of Prof Yvonne Schiffelers. Thembinkosi has been awarded several merit bursaries and studied as an exchange student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. Additionally, she has participated in vocal masterclasses led by Klesie Kelly-Moog, Mya Besselink, Kamal Khan, Roberta Alexander, Janice Dixon, Rachelle Jonck, Barbara Hill-Moore, Rosemary Joshua, Erica Eloff, Kobie van Rensburg, and Dunja Vejzovic. She also participated in a workshop with Lotte de Beer and took part in the Incanto Tignano programme with Nicola Carbone. Her career highlights include performances as Cunegonde in Bernstein’s Candide in the Netherlands, and inPortugal; a concert version of Porgy and Bess in November 2019 conducted by Jan Cober; and as Musetta inPuccini’s La Bohème by the Nederlandse Reisopera in 2017. Her performance experiences further include therole of Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in Potchefstroom under the direction of Robert Lehmeier, soloroles in Aardklop productions of the Requiem by Mozart and the one by Fauré, and the Les Azuriale’sproduction of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias in Monaco (2018).  

Tanja Gaustad is a senior computational linguist and data scientist at the Centre for Text Technology (CTexT) at the NWU. She holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and has worked in both academia and industry across three continents. Her experience includes research and development, supervision of postgraduate students, teaching, as well as project management and project leadership. In her research, Tanja always focusses on bringing together a computational, data-driven approach with insights from linguistics, often bridging the gap between different disciplines. She has published on a variety of topics including author attribution, data annotation and quality control, embeddings for low-resource languages, word sense disambiguation, and universal dependency annotation for Setswana.

Cara Stacey is pianist, musical bow player, composer and musicologist based in Johannesburg. Her research interests span Swati traditional music, southern African musical bow praxis, and discourse around innovation and heritage within local indigenous musical traditions. Her artistic work draws together musical bow structures, mbira and flute traditions from across southern Africa, free improvisation and collaborative composition. Her most recent commission explores decayed reel-to-reel tapes in the Hidden Years Music Archive at Stellenbosch University, as well as different understandings of decay as prompts for music-making. Stacey sits on the executive committee for the South African Society for Research in Music and is the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance country liaison office for Eswatini. She is on the editorial committee for the Journal for Artistic Research, as well as the South African Music Studies (SAMUS) and Muziki journals. Stacey also chairs the Sterkfontein Composers Meeting board.

Liesl van der Merwe is a professor in the School of Music and MASARA at the North-West University, South Africa. Her research interests lie in the fields of music education, music and well-being, positive psychology, music and spirituality, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and lived musical experiences. Liesl supervises qualitative postgraduate music studies and teaches research methodology, music education, and bassoon. She has published articles in high-impact journals. Liesl is a National Research Foundation (NRF) C2-rated researcher. She completed the research project Social Cohesion Through Community Music Engagement in South African Higher Music Education. She was one of the volume editors of the Peter Lang book Ritualised Belonging: Musicing and Spirituality in the South African Context. Liesl is on the steering and scientific committees of the Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing International Network (MSW) and The International Conference of Dalcroze Studies (ICDS). Liesl was one of the keynote speakers at the 2021 ICDS5 conference. She has also been invited by the series editor, Prof Liora Bresler, to be on Springer's Editorial Board of the Landscapes: The Arts, Aesthetics, and Education book series, and she was one of the guest editors of a special edition on positive psychology and music education in the International Journal of Education and the Arts. She also performs as a bassoonist in chamber music ensembles, such as Trio Joie de Vivre and is one of the conductors of the North West Youth Orchestra. Musicking with older adults on a Monday is some of her most meaningful work.

Ewie Erasmus is an associate professor in music education at the North-West University School of Music. She is affiliated with the Musical Arts in South Africa: Resources and Applications (MASARA) focus area. Her research interests include music education, music and well-being, and compassionate music education. She is responsible for undergraduate music education modules and postgraduate supervision. She was a guest editor of a special edition on positive psychology and music education for the International Journal of Education and the Arts and a researcher in an NRF-funded project titled “Social Cohesion through Community Music Engagement in South African Higher Music Education”. She has delivered keynote addresses and published in high-impact journals.

Janelize Morelli is the Director of the North-West University Centre for Digital Humanities.. Janelize holds a PhD in Music Education from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She supervises postgraduate students interested in transformative music education, community music and arts-based research. Her research interests include the ethics of post-human music education, music technology and accessibility, and community music. She is currently exploring themes related to the ways in which human-computer interactions contribute to or detract from participatory musicking ethics. In her creative practice, Janelize explores data sonification and participatory musicking as acts of public scholarship.

Abiodun Salawu is Professor of Journalism, Communication and Media Studies and Director of the research entity, Indigenous Language Media in Africa (ILMA) at the North-West University, South Africa. He has taught and researched media and communication for about three decades in Nigeria and SA. Prior to his academic career, he practised journalism in a number of print media organisations in Nigeria. He has, to his credit, close to 200 scholarly publications in academic journals and books. He has also edited/co-edited fifteen books and authored one. A well-travelled scholar, he has presented papers at conferences in countries across all the continents of the world. Abiodun has also enjoyed fellowships (visiting researcher) at universities in United Kingdom, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea and Sweden. He has also won a number of research grants. He holds leadership positions in the International Association for Media and Communication Research and the International Association for Minority Language Media Research. He is an editor and a member of editorial/advisory boards of a number of journals. He is rated by the NRF (of SA) as an established researcher at the level of C1 (with international recognition) and he is a member of the Codesria’s College of Senior Academic Mentors. Abiodun is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, a member of the Royal Society of South Africa and Orbicom, a UNESCO network of Communication Professors.

Héniel Fourie is a filmmaker, multimedia designer, and academic specialising in the intersection of emerging technologies and creative practice. With almost two decades of industry experience and more than ten years in academia, he currently serves as Subject Group Chair for Graphic Design at North-West University. His research and teaching focus on the integration of emerging technologies in design and design education, with a particular interest in practice-led methodologies, co-creativity, and algorithmic authorship. Héniel is an active contributor to dialogues on technology and design and is deeply engaged in reimagining creative agency in the digital age.