Resilience, advocacy and scholar-activism: responding to COVID-19 in Kenyan, Mexican and British universities

Based on in-depth interviews, surveys and autoethnography we explore ways in which staff responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) based in Kenya (University of Nairobi), Mexico (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur) and the United Kingdom (University of Leeds). HEIs are dependent on staff’s resilience and goodwill to “get through the tough times”. This is evident when we examine the effect universities’ lack of support had on staff during the first months of lockdown in 2020. HEIs were not able to provide adequate IT equipment, training, and wellbeing support for staff yet we were still expected to “perform” to high standards. We analyse the challenges faced to quickly get acquainted with online teaching without any reflection on how this transition impacted our pedagogy, particularly for those of us who identify as scholar-activists. Added stress of learning new ways of delivering teaching coupled with caring responsibilities, isolation, bereavement, a decrease in living wages and cut to staff pensions has had a long-lasting detrimental effect on staff’s mental health. At the same time, university staff and students have pushed back as a community to advocate for better teaching and learning conditions. We discuss the wider impacts of COVID-19 on staff’s commitment to social justice within and outside the traditional university setting.