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Mbulungeni Madiba

Mbulungeni
Madiba
Fellowship: 
Mandela Fellow
Term in Residence: 
Spring 2009
Title / Appointment: 
Associate Professor
Location: 
Cape Town University, South Africa

Contact Information

Address: 
104 Mount Auburn St, 3R
Telephone: 
617-384-8346
E-Mail: 
madiba@fas.harvard.edu

Biography Information

Mbulungeni Madiba is an associate professor and co-ordinator of the Multilingualism Education Project in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. He obtained his MA in African Languages and DLitt et Phil in Linguistics at the University of South Africa. His main areas of interest are language policies, language planning; politics of language, multilingualism and corpus linguistics. He has received several study grants or awards: DAAD (University of Cologne, Germany), Oppenheimer Fellow (University of London, UK) and Visiting Research Fellow (University of Birmingham). He has published several papers on language planning and policies.

Project Description

Multilingualism Education Project

The research stems from my involvement in the implementation of the University’s Language Policy and Plan as the Co-ordinator of the Multilingualism Education Project. The Multilingualism Education Project was launched in 2005 to  provide guidance on how to foster a multilingual environment within the university and to promote the implementation of multilingualism in teaching and learning programmes.  Whereas it is easier to implement multilingualism in the institutional environment, the implementation of multilingualism in teaching and learning programmes poses theoretical and methodological challenges.  Accordingly, my research proposes to explore the theoretical frameworks on multilingual education in higher education and develop models for the implementation of multilingualism in learning and teaching programmes at UCT.