Bilan visite de Cécile Gerwel Proches, enseignante-chercheure à l’Université de Kwazulu-Natal (Afrique du Sud)

After the academic research and staff exchanges of Siegfried Rouvrais at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Pierre Tremembert at University of Western Cape (UWC) in March 2016, Dr Cecile Gerwel Proches from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) was a visiting researcher in the TREE research Group at Télécom Bretagne from 6 September to 5 October 2016. She was funded through an Erasmus Mundus Inspire Exchange programme aimed at allowing South African researchers to conduct research collaborations at well-recognised European education institutions.

Cecile participated in a research project with Siegfried Rouvrais and Nathalie Chelin to explore the perceptions of Engineering students regarding their preferences and expectations for their first job. For qualitative analysis, she conducted four semi-structured interviews with 2nd year students (focus group). Cecile also had an opportunity to engage faculty and students through presentations and informal discussions. She delivered lectures to three English Language classes which provided an overview of South Africa and its rich cultural diversity and intercultural heritage. Cecile also engaged students on matters concerning the organisational context with a specific focus on leadership and management, and had various opportunities to observe and learn about innovative and interactive pedagogical methods employed at Télécom Bretagne.

Cecile also met with various faculty including Prof. Alison Gourvès-Hayward, Dr Aimee Johansen, A/Prof. Cathy Sable, Prof Sandrine Vaton, and Nadia Zeini to present her research regarding gender and leadership, diversity in the organizational context, and to share practices regarding teaching and research. Cecile also met with Dr Sylvie Stephan from the Brest Business School and Dr Sophie Le Bris from Ecole Navale to exchange ideas on organizational studies and qualitative research.

Cecile is based in the Graduate School of Business and Leadership, College of Law and Management Studies at UKZN in Durban, South Africa (http://gsbl.ukzn.ac.za/Homepage.aspx).  Her areas of teaching and research are in the field of organisational behaviour, leadership, systems and complexity theory and qualitative research. She holds a BCom (UPE), BCom Honours (Industrial and Organisational Psychology) (NMMU), a MCom (Leadership Studies) (UKZN) and PhD (Leadership Studies) (UKZN). She teaches and supervises post-graduate students at Master’s and Doctoral level, and regularly publishes in journals and presents her work at academic conferences. Hopefully the research work conducted by Cecile at Telecom Bretagne, to be submitted in a journal in 2017, will echo the international dimension of Telecom Bretagne with the African continent.