In this think piece, I ask what it takes for research relationships to be centred on trust. My reflections are divided into three sections in which I share some lessons learnt from various research projects. At the end of each section, I pose a series of interrelated questions about the values, principles and practices that are indispensable to building, repairing and maintaining trust in research relationships. To conclude, I outline how these reflections will be brought together in my keynote address.

This poetic inquiry explores the complex dynamics of trust within the context of higher education, particularly focusing on the collective experiences of marginalised communities. Drawing from the themes of the special issue "Reimagining Trust in Higher Education" in the journal Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL), the poem grapples with the deep-seated mistrust that stems from historical and ongoing injustices, such as colonialism, apartheid, and systemic inequality. Through a powerful and evocative use of the collective voice, the poem highlights the shared struggles and resilience of those fighting for social justice, decolonisation, and equity in academia. It interrogates the hollow promises of trust from institutions that have perpetuated harm and exclusion, while also acknowledging the transformative potential of collective action and self-determination. By weaving together personal and political narratives, the poem invites readers to reflect on the urgent need to cultivate genuine trust, healing, and solidarity within higher education. It challenges us to confront the depths of institutional betrayal and to imagine new possibilities for building a more just and inclusive academic landscape. Situated within the broader discourses of critical pedagogy, decolonial praxis, and social justice education, this poetic inquiry contributes to the ongoing conversations about reimagining trust in higher education. It offers a creative and embodied approach to engaging with the complexities of trust, trauma, and resistance, and calls for a radical transformation of the structures and relationships that shape our educational spaces.

Transformation, or the lack thereof, student activism, and other day-to-day processes and rules in higher education institutions may lead to situations in which staff witness or are complicit in actions that contradict their sense of right and wrong. As a result, they may experience what is often described as ‘burnout’. It may be more accurate to describe the responses in terms of violations of their moral code, or ‘moral injury’. This conceptual paper draws on the literature on moral injury from other contexts and applies it to the experiences of staff in a higher education context, in South Africa and beyond, through the author’s reflections on her own experiences. Moral injury has numerous potential effects, such as a loss of trust in self or others, feelings of guilt or shame, withdrawal, and interpersonal difficulties. Dealing with moral injury involves grappling with the conditions that create these injuries.

“Feedback trust” is an important, though often take-for-granted component of the feedback dialogue. If not maintained, it may be easily lost or broken, which may impact the effectiveness of feedback. In this paper, I unpack the notion of feedback trust by examining what are the factors that enable (or constrain) it, whether feedback trust is automatic, and whether feedback trust can be repaired. The paper is framed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s (2000) conceptualisation of trust. Qualitative data were collected from Honours students in an Arts and Humanities Faculty at a South African university using questionnaires (15) and interviews (6); data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The results broadly indicate that there are three main factors that influence feedback trust: the feedback itself, the feedback giver, and the feedback community. In addition, the results show that feedback trust is to some degree automatic, as it is tied to the role of feedback giver, but that it may strengthen or weaken over time, depending on experience. Lastly, the results show that feedback trust can be repaired through communication, though it depends on how it was broken or lost. This paper outlines that there are four Cs necessary to build, maintain, and repair feedback trust between students and educators: connection, communication, care, and comments.

Trust has been a central theme in academic integrity discourse for decades. In this piece, I think about trust from a variety of perspectives: student conduct, faculty conduct, and organizational trust. I then discuss the role of trust in addressing misconduct. These framings are drawn from a model of Comprehensive Academic Integrity (CAI), in which academic integrity includes and extends beyond student conduct.

When I was teaching first year students the introduction to international relations in July 2023, the coup in Niger took place. Seven coups have happened since August 2020 in west and central Africa. I tell the first years that it is not farfetched to imagine that one day they might come out of class to broadcasts by figures in the South African National Defence Force that they have taken over the country. I deliberately call the course the “personal is the international” to make clear that, for better or worse, the students’ dreams and gifts are defined by “the international”. Making this point is easier standing in front of a group of students whose lives have been radically redefined by a global pandemic that began in another continent.

A key assumption made in the literature is that trust in education is positive. This assumption underpins the work of notable scholars of education, such as Freire (1970) and hooks (1994), and is reiterated in Magadla’s (2023) remarks in ‘Trust as a condition for radical entanglement’. While I agree with them that it is essential for trust to exist in a healthy and humanising learning environment, I am also mindful of calls for caution, such as those offered by Rice (2006) and Kovač and Kristiansen (2010), which provide reasons to believe that excessive trust can have negative effects on learning and the environments and relationships within which learning takes place. Given calls for and against the promotion of trust in education spaces and drawing on my experiences co-creating and co-facilitating a student-led and student-centred course in ethics, I suggest the need to recognise the ambiguity of trust in higher education.

This paper uses collaborative autoethnography and document analysis to examine the policymaking process during COVID-19 in the public higher education system in South Africa. The conceptual framework outlines the multi-dimensional nature of trust and the complexity of policy-making. The paper argues that system-wide cooperation was grounded in a form of systemic trust that was possible due to the nature of the COVID-19 emergency, the policy context of South African higher education, and interinstitutional relationships that had been built prior to the pandemic. We outline the nature of cooperation, enabling policy directions to be published quickly, supporting institutions to act flexibly within a legal framework that created conditions for the relatively safe completion of academic years. The paper argues that the systemic trust that existed during this time provides insights for the ways in which leadership and collaboration can create conditions for strengthening public trust in the system.

Since the release of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools have become ubiquitous in higher education teaching-learning-assessment (TLA). This paper explores how generative AI impacts trust relationships within the TLA context between students and lecturers in relation to AI technologies. Framed by Rolfe, Freshwater and Jasper’s (2001) reflective model of what, so what, now what, we draw on practical experiences to demonstrate how an integrated model of AI literacies can enhance student engagement and foster critical interaction with generative AI, ultimately cultivating a criticality toward traditional ways of knowledge construction in the classroom. Instead of fostering unquestioning trust, we propose a pedagogy of distrust – an environment of healthy scepticism where students (and lecturers) critically interrogate both generative AI and human contributions to knowledge creation.

In higher education, trust is possible (or not) based on the dynamic between different components and people in the university. This paper considers the relationship between students and their lecturer in the context of a neoliberal ethos. Using an African feminist lens, the close-up, self-study of a postgraduate course in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University is examined for its intentions and transgressions to determine how trust can be built and ruptured. Two ideas – ‘conscientisation’ and ‘connection’ – are theorised and then demonstrated through the reflections of the students and lecturer.