Thierry Luescher is the Research Director for post-schooling and work in the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa. He is also an affiliated Associate Professor in Higher Education Studies at the University of the Free State, where he previously worked as Assistant Director for Institutional Research. During his doctoral studies, Thierry was a researcher in the Council on Higher Education, Pretoria, which is the statutory advisory body to the Minister of Higher Education and Training. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Thierry became a Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Post-School Studies of UWC and an Extra-ordinary Senior Lecturer in Political Studies.
Thierry has a Bachelor of Arts in political studies, history and African languages and literature (isiXhosa), and a PhD in political studies from the University of Cape Town (UCT). He also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in higher education studies from the University of the Free State (with distinction). As a student at UCT, Thierry was a member of the South African Students Congress, Vice-President of the Students’ Representative Council of UCT in 1999/2000, and a member of the National Executive of the South African Universities–Students Representative Council (SAU-SRC) in 2001.
Thierry has researched higher education and student politics in Africa as part of a number of research groups, including the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA), the ESRC-NRF research group ‘Higher Education Pathways to the Public Good’ and currently the HSRC project ‘The New South African Student Movement: From #RMF to #FMF’. He is an NRF-rated researcher with a specialisation in higher education policy and politics, student politics, and student affairs.
Thierry is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (SA), the Journal of College Student Development (US), the Makerere Journal of Higher Education (UG), and the book series African Higher Education Dynamics (SA/UK). His recent publications include the books Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (African Minds, 2016), edited with Manja Klemenčič (Harvard) and James Otieno Jowi (Moi); Innovation Policy at the Intersection: Global Debates and Local Experiences (HSRC Press, 2020) with MBG Cele (NACI) and A Wilson Fadiji (HSRC), and Reflections of South African Student Leaders: 1994 to 2017 (African Minds, 2020), with D Webbstock (UJ) and N Bhengu (CHE). Thierry is currently working on a book on the 2015/16 student movement. His publications can be downloaded open access at http://www.thierryluescher.net.
