Technologies of Disempowerment: Digitalisation, Academic Labour and the Pedagogy of Care in South African and UK Universities

This paper explores the effect of the digitalisation of higher education on the transformation of academic labour and the pedagogy of care. Drawing on 17 focus groups involving 53 academics across South African and UK universities, the study asks how digital technologies introduced in the name of widening access and pedagogical innovation are experienced by academics in their everyday life within two distinct university systems. The paper identifies three key contradictions that digitalisation brings into sharp focus within faculty experience: marketisation vs scarcity; democratisation vs alienation; and workload intensification vs disempowerment. It demonstrates how within a market-driven university landscape marked by structural inequalities and resource asymmetries, digital technologies increasingly intensify these contradictions. While often presented as neutral tools for enhancing access and efficiency, they are experienced by academics as technologies of disempowerment that reorganise academic labour and constrain the responsive, reciprocal, and relational pillars of the pedagogy of care.