Isha Dilraj is a doctoral candidate in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town, and is a National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Scholar. Her doctoral study is focused on issues of access, inclusion and transformation in higher education in a neoliberal South Africa given the impact of the complex history of apartheid and colonialism within the country. She is extremely passionate about social justice issues pertaining to education, transformation and policy, decolonisation debates, access and inequality concerns, and gender equity/equality issues.
Isha has worked in the higher education sector in South Africa where she engaged in administration and planning, project management, staff-and-student development, system development, and observing policy formulation and implementation. This experience drives her resolve to engage in research to further understand and contribute to research in the complex higher education arena in post-apartheid South Africa. Her research interests include education policy, higher education, political economy of education, theories of power, access, and transformation.