By Thandiwe Johnson

It would be unusual for a single Rhodes academic to be awarded both the Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Senior Research Award and the Senior Distinguished Teaching Award over the course of their careers. But for Prof Sioux McKenna the March 2026 graduation brought both on the same day — a double honour that she describes as both a surprise and a source of profound affirmation.

“I knew that I was shortlisted for the Senior Teaching Award because part of the process is you get nominated and then you get asked to submit a portfolio, and then the committee sits in on some of your classes, and then they do an interview,” she explained. “So that’s not a secret. Of course, the secret is whether you get it or not, but the research one, I had no idea!” said McKenna.

Having worked at four different universities over her career, McKenna describes Rhodes University as the institution she has called home the longest. Now five years from retirement, she reflects on what these awards mean at this particular stage of her journey.

“I’ve been here for 16 years now. I don’t know how that happened. It went so quickly,” she said, adding that the recognition is especially meaningful at a time when her sense of purpose in academia is shifting.

For McKenna, approaching retirement does not mean slowing down — it means changing focus. She describes how seniority in academia brings with it the privilege and responsibility to open doors for others: inviting junior colleagues to co-author articles, bringing postdoctoral researchers into workshops, and advocating for colleagues to join major international projects.

“When you’re starting, you are hoping to be the one who gets invited. When you’re finishing your career, you suddenly find, oh, I get to invite other people,” she said. “I think that’s pretty cool.”

When asked to describe her teaching philosophy, McKenna distils it into a single phrase: “epistemic access with epistemic justice.” Drawing on the work of South African philosopher Wally Morrow and philosopher Miranda Fricker, she argues that simply getting students through the door of a university is not enough.

“Epistemic access is about more than getting through the syllabus. It’s about getting through the syllabus in a way in which students can actively make sense of the knowledge, can make that knowledge their own, can be empowered by that knowledge,” she explained.

But epistemic access alone is insufficient, she argues. It must be paired with epistemic justice.

McKenna’s latest research passion sits at the intersection of technology, power, and knowledge: generative artificial intelligence. Working with collaborators from Stellenbosch and Rhodes University, she is investigating what she calls the broader societal implications of AI — implications she believes South African and global south universities are not adequately engaging with.

“Universities, because we are meant to be a common good — should be good for all people and the planet — our engagement with generative AI can’t only be [about] students are going to use it to cheat,” she said.

Her particular concern is algorithmic bias: the way datasets underpinning large language models embed certain worldviews while obscuring others.

Asked what she would say to junior academics striving to become excellent teachers, Prof McKenna’s answer is candid and compassionate. She acknowledges the intense performance pressures facing early-career academics today, but urges them not to lose sight of the joy that teaching can bring.

“There’s an enormous joy in teaching… those aha moments when you’re battling to make a complicated concept accessible, and then you can literally see on the faces of people going, 'oh!'. That’s a very cool moment,” she reflected.

Central to her advice is the urge for new academics to be upfront with students about their own limitations and to resist the urge to present themselves as infallible.