Thierry M. Luescher is a South African-Swiss author and researcher at the

Human Sciences Research Council The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa is Africa's largest dedicated social science and humanities research agency and policy think tank. It primarily conducts large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific projects for publi ...

and affiliated professor at the

University of the Free State The University of the Free State is a multi-campus public university in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State and the judicial capital of South Africa. It was first established as an institution of higher learning in 1904 as a tertiary se ...

Early life

Thierry Luescher was born in

Zofingen Zofingen (french: Zofingue) is a city in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. It is the capital of the district of Zofingen. Zofingen is a walled city and home of an ancient monastic settlement. History In ancient times Zofingen was a settleme ...

, Switzerland, in 1971, grew up in

Oberentfelden Oberentfelden is a municipality in the district of Aarau of the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. History Oberentfelden is first mentioned in 965 as ''Endiveld''. In 1306 it was mentioned as ''Oberen-En elt''. Geography Oberentfelden has an area ...

and

Muhen Muhen is a municipality in the district of Aarau of the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. History Muhen is first mentioned in 1045 as ''Mucheim'', though this comes from a 14th-century copy of the original. In 1267 it was mentioned as ''Mukhein''. ...

, and moved to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

in 1995 to study African languages, African history and political science at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

(B.A. 1999; PhD, 2009).

Early politics

During his formative years, Luescher's mother and father were both involved in local politics and members of the Social-Democratic Party of Switzerland. In 1989, Luescher became involved in activist youth politics as a member of the LGBTI advocacy group HAZ in Zurich and gave interviews and made several appearances on Swiss television on the HIV/Aids pandemic then raging through Switzerland's gay community. He was a member of the first Youth Session of the Swiss Parliament in 1991, as a representative of the national organisation "Initiative Lesbisch/Schwule Jugend Schweiz (ILSJS)". After relocating to South Africa in 1995, he became a member of Abigail (the Cape Town-based Association of Bisexuals, Gays and Lesbians) where he met a number of gay anti-apartheid activists, including Zaki Achmat who later founded the

Treatment Action Campaign The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid backgrou ...

Student politics and public mandate

While studying at the University of Cape Town, Luescher became a member of the

South African Students Congress The South African Students Congress (SASCO) is a South African student organisation currently led by Bamanye Matiwane as the organization's President. SASCO was founded in September 1991 at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, through ...

which deployed him to stand as candidate for the university's Students' Representative Council (SRC) in 1999. He was SRC Vice-President from 1999 to 2000 and a member of the national executive committee of the South African Union of Students (then SAU-SRC) in 2001. In 2019, Luescher was a surprise candidate for the national election to the Swiss National Council on the international list of the Social-Democratic Party of the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Career

Luescher started a career in research into higher education politics as the first researcher of the statutory South African advisory body to the Minister of Higher Education, the Council on Higher Education (2002-2008). He was a postdoctoral fellow (2009-2012) and senior lecturer (2012-2014) in Higher Education Studies at the

University of the Western Cape The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other un ...

. In 2014, Luescher moved to the

in Bloemfontein/Mangaung to take up the post of assistant director for institutional research (2014-2017). During that time, he also added to his PhD in Political Science from UCT a postgraduate diploma in higher education teaching and learning. In 2017, he was called to take up the post of research director for higher education in the

. Luescher has held additional honorary academic appointments, including as extra-ordinary senior lecturer in political studies with the Department of Political Science,

(2011-2015), and as affiliated associate professor in higher education studies with the School of Higher Education Studies,

(2017 to present). He is a founder and trustee of the South Africa-based open access academic publishe
African Minds
a founder and editor of th
Journal of Student Affairs in Africa
(2013 to present) which is published with

Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

; an associate editor of the serie
African Higher Education Dynamics
since 2015; and an international associate editor of the Uganda
Makerere Journal of Higher Education
and the U
Journal of College Student Development.
Luescher has authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles, book chapters and books on topics closely linked to the nexus of higher education and politics in Africa. Some of his main topics include the representation of students in university decision-making, student activism and student movements, the student experience of higher education, university governance, higher education expansion and development in Africa, and the contribution of higher education to democracy and social justice in Africa. Luescher's contribution to the study of student politics in Africa has been recognized internationally and in South Africa. In 2018 he was awarded a research rating by the National Research Foundation of South Africa as "currently the most published author on student politics in Africa". Luescher is also considered an expert on Philip Altbach's body of work on student activism, which he has synthesized as contributions to several books on international student politics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luescher, Thierry 1971 births Living people South African male writers South African political scientists Swiss emigrants to South Africa University of Cape Town alumni