Keynote speakers

Abstract: Work-integrated learning is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between learning and professional practice and with how knowledge is developed, shared, and transformed across the boundaries of educational and workplace settings.

These processes are increasingly shaped by sophisticated AI systems, such as large language models, that mediate access to information, generate representations of expertise, support decision-making, and participate in the production and circulation of knowledge itself.

Approaching AI as an epistemic technology shifts attention from questions of automation and efficiency toward the changing conditions under which knowledge is produced, encountered, evaluated, and put to work. As AI becomes embedded in professional practice, it also becomes part of the infrastructure through which work is known, performed, and learned.

This development raises important questions about expertise, judgment, authority, and professional learning. What happens when learners encounter professional knowledge through systems trained on traces of prior professional activity? How are pathways to expertise reshaped when the performance of expertise can increasingly be generated synthetically? And what becomes of professional judgment when knowledge claims are continuously produced, reformulated, and circulated by machines?

Drawing on research on digital platforms, knowledge practices, and AI, this talk examines how AI is reshaping the relationship between learning, work, and professional knowledge and considers the implications for work-integrated learning in a world where AI is becoming part of the infrastructure of knowing.

Bio: Thomas Hillman is Professor of Applied Information Technology for Education at the University of Gothenburg. His research examines how digital technologies reshape learning, knowledge practices, and professional work, with a particular focus on digital platforms, online knowledge-sharing communities, artificial intelligence, and the automation of education. He has led and collaborated on research exploring how expertise is produced, circulated, and evaluated in digitally mediated environments, from social media and online professional communities to emerging AI systems. His work brings together perspectives from education, science and technology studies, and human-computer interaction to understand how digital infrastructures are transforming the conditions for learning and professional practice.

Bio: Lisa Bomble is a senior lecturer in sustainable planning and collaboration with a PhD from Chalmers Architecture and Planning.

Her research has always been about sustainability and participation, always in close collaboration with Swedish municipalities and in academic environments of "transdisciplinary knowledge production" and innovation. First at Chalmers, Gothenburg, then as an employee at both municipal and regional level before returning to academia.

At University West, WIL became a new way of looking at knowledge as a simultaneously very personal and common resource. Or is it a product?

Years of experience facilitating as well as researching collaboration between civil society and the public sector makes Lisa the perfect host for an activity during the mingle where we ask ourselves: Whose knowledge? At what time? In what format(s)? 

 

Bio: Henk de Jager studied full-time for 3 years and part-time for 15 years. During his studies, he obtained an MDipTech in Electrical Engineering, a BA in Industrial Psychology, a Postgraduate Diploma in Tertiary Education, and a DTech in Education Management.

He has 37 years of experience in higher education, including 12 years as Executive Dean in Engineering, Technology, Built Environment, and Information Technology at Vaal University of Technology and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, respectively. He became Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Central University of Technology (CUT), effective 1 June 2017, a position he held until 30 September 2021. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Technological Higher Education Network of South Africa (THENSA) since 1 October 2023.

Henk is registered as a Professional Engineering Technologist with the Engineering Council of South Africa. He was also a Board member of Universities South Africa (USAf) and the South African Technology Network (SATN); Deputy Chairperson of the Board of SATN; Chairperson of the World of Work Strategy Group of USAf; and member of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP). He has supervised at the postgraduate level and holds several publications in proceedings and scientific journals. His research focuses on innovation ecosystems, governance in higher education institutions, and strategic management and leadership in higher education.

Henk regards himself as a proud African and as a son of the soil of this great continent. He embraces the late President Nelson Mandela’s approach to leadership – “I am leading by serving others” – and regards the function of leadership as producing more leaders, not more followers.