Astrid von Kotze
Scholar-activist Astrid von Kotze is one of the leading educators and scholars in South Africa in the field of radical adult education. Over the course of thirty-five years, she has participated in social justice movements for workers, women, and environmentalists. She has served as a senior lecturer and professor of adult and community development for more than two decades. Her life’s work has emphasized the importance of “people’s voices” in the democratization of learning. She is committed to the role of adult education in contributing to social, economic, and environmental justice, and to reimagining a better world.
Von Kotze’s work in adult education is indelibly linked to her participation as a founding member in the Junction Avenue Theatre Company in the 1970s. One of South Africa’s best known workshop theater groups, Junction Avenue was formed by university students to make historically informed plays about South African society. Von Kotze recognized a connection between theater and the arts and adult education in their ability to mobilize audiences to change the way they related to other people and to address inequalities and injustices. This recognition has influenced her work ever since.
In 1982, after pursuing an advanced diploma in adult education, von Kotze began work in trade union education in Durban, putting on writing and play-making workshops. In 1990, she began working in adult education at the University of Natal, where she participated in National Education Policy Initiative research and designed an undergraduate program in community education that targeted students working in nongovernmental organizations, unions, and faith-based organizations, and who had primarily been denied access to university education. Two years later she was invited to design curriculum and develop teaching materials for development workers in southern Africa in disaster mitigation. Von Kotze explored how relevant adult education in precarious times of increasing food and work insecurities and social and economic justice would have to be a flexible and adaptable “pedagogy of contingency.”
In 2009, von Kotze began working with Helen Keller International and Save the Children in Bangladesh to develop and test curriculum and teaching materials in nutrition education and mother/child health for communities with limited literacy skills. In 2011, she cofounded an NGO, the Popular Education Program (PEP), which worked with poor communities and social movements, offering informal workshops and courses in South Africa. She also created and toured three plays addressing tuberculosis and domestic violence. These productions demonstrated the power of taking education to communities rather than waiting for community members to come to adult education.
From 2013 to 2018 von Kotze served as lead researcher and co-coordinator for the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences research program “Traditions of Popular Education,” and gained recognition for her innovative use of social media to make its findings available online. In 2018 she also co-organized the first international conference for the Popular Education Network (PEN) to be held in Africa; the network brings university-based adult and popular educators together.