Dr Xoliswa Mtose was born and
bred in the Eastern Cape. Her current position
is that of Executive Dean: Faculty of Education
at the University of Fort Hare. Her main
function, therefore, is to drive the vision of
the Faculty of Education. The vision of the
faculty of Education is: To seek to be a
world-class Southern African Faculty of
Education, preparing 21st century
educators who are critical, creative
problem-solvers, initiators and leaders in
education. This, also, entails ensuring that he
faculty responds to a wide range of teacher
education needs, critical educational issues as
well as engaging in relevant research.
Dr Mtose obtained her B.A.
degree at the University of Fort Hare and her
Higher Diploma in Education (Primary) from the
University of Cape Town. She continued with her
studies and in1998 she completed her Honours
degree at the Rhodes University and her Masters
in Philosophy degree at the University of
Stellenbosch in 2001.
In the 2002/2003 academic
year she was awarded a Harvard/South African
Scholarship, where she specialized in Research.
The seeds of continuing with her doctoral
studies on race and identity were planted at
that stage, while studying in the United
States. She obtained the Doctor of Philosophy
degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in
2008.
During her whole career Dr
Mtose has held various positions at tertiary
level. She started as a lecturer at the Rhodes
University in the Department of Primary
Education and was later appointed as a
Coordinator of In-Service Teacher Education
Programmes. The most noticeable highlight in
her career was when she was appointed as the
Director of the School for Initial Education at
the University of Fort Hare. This was the
period when the Higher Education Quality
Committee (HEQC) was conducting a review of
teacher education programmes that were offered
by Higher Education Institutions. Due to her
leadership, as Director, all the programmes in
the faculty of education, that were under
review, received full accreditation. She is
currently serving in a number of institutional
committees, including that of being a member of
the University of Fort Hare Council.
Dr Mtose’s research mainly
focuses on issues of identity, race and
post-apartheid blackness. Whilst accepting that
the race is a social construction and that
racial identities are labile and fluid, she
believes that forms of racial subjectivity are
also deep-rooted and persistent. Indeed, one of
the remarkable outcomes of political
transformation in South Africa has been the
degree to which racial identification has
remained entrenched, despite such profound
socio-political changes.
