What a loss!  Liz was truly an inspiring person. While I had had wonderful exchanges with her at various DUT?UKZN events, it was at the Writing Workshop just this past March at the Assagay Hotel in Hillcrest where I most recently got to see Liz in action. She spoke so clearly and passionately - we all jumped into  her wonderful 'me as a writer' activity. Who could not? When we have such moments and such a person we really must savour the time. That's what I am learning.
What a special person to have in our midst.
Love from Claudia 

It was during Liz's PhD journey that I got to know her (and the PaperHeads) well. Wow! What a mind! (Sometimes I even forgot that she was the 'student' and i was the 'teacher'). What a soul! What humility! What generosity! I am all the richer for having known this phenomenal woman! Hamba kahle Liz! You will be forever loved. LEBO

Teacher. mentor, friend

Like Kathleen, I have had a hard time explaining to 6 year old Ben why I have felt so sad for the last couple of days. He never met Liz, and so he has no concept of her effect on my life. To him, she is an abstract concept. To me, she was a teacher, a mentor, and a friend.

I met Liz when she was my teacher when I tackled DUT's wonderful Pioneers Programme, learning to set up and run online classrooms. As a teacher, she was inspirational, challenging us each week to stretch ourselves further, always asking me to approach a technical task by using my creative muscles. Her enthusiasm for my work, which didn't really fit the mold, and her endless patience and good humour with us all, were a lesson in how to be a true teacher; a real sharer of knowledge and expertise.

Later, through our involvement in the TES project, I began to see Liz as something of a mentor; every time we met, she was nothing but positive and encouraging about my work. Again, she always pushed me to stretch a bit further, be a bit more imaginative in my approach. At the writing workshop in March, she did it again, when a chance comment she made inspired a whole new form for the chapter Tamar and I are writing.

From the beginning, I felt that Liz was a friend. Sometimes you meet someone, and the rapport is instant. Such was my feeling about Liz! She always had a smile, a joke, and a warm word for me when we met.

When she became ill, she started a blog, which I followed, and so I got a picture of the full and happy life she led. The blog was a lesson in facing illness with dignity and humour - she truly fought the good fight, never bemoaning her fate, but always remaining positive and upbeat, in the face of a terrible illness.

When I heard of her death, I wept for the loss of her bright, vital spirit, her dry sense of humour, and her acute intelligence. I cannot imagine the depth of loss that Pat and her family must be suffering. I know that I will miss her very much. Rest in Peace, Liz.

just write...

Just write....we need to write...that message from LIz is a mantra she always shared with me. She truly inspired me along my doctoral journey and as a colleague.

A message from Siza Makhanya

When I read the sad news on Monday . I sat down and cried in my office. I decided to send the below email to Mabongie and said Its so painful.  She replied and said its hard.

From: Makhanya, Siza [mailto:Siza@mut.ac.za]
Sent: 29 July 2013 12:24 PM
To: Sibongile Ansie Madi
Subject: Kwabuhlungu

 Hawu Sbo kodwa kwabuhlungu kakhulu

 Siza

I have words which were said by Liz to me when I  was at their office she asked me “ How is the going with your studies” I did not answer because I was still thinking  of what to say. She immediately said smiling “continue writing you will learn by doing”. I always remember those words even when I am not sure of my writing that I will learn by doing.

Rest in peace Liz it was such a blessing to meet you.

"This is going to be a wonderful ride" -- Liz Harrison

Last night, as I was putting our three-year-old daughter, May, to bed, I started to cry. I don't think she'd ever seen me cry before. She asked me why I was crying and I told her that I was sad. Then, of course, she asked me why I was sad. I wasn't sure how to explain and so, in the end, I just said, "Because Mommy's friend died." May looked at me with concern and repeated, "Mommy's friend died?" And then, she shook her head and smiled at me and said confidently, "No she didn't!"

May then went on to tell me which bedtime stories she wanted, secure in her belief that she had made everything better.

And of course, in an important sense, May was right. Even while we are feeling bereft, our dear Liz Harrison is alive in all the people who love her. And she is alive in the TES Project. In March this year, Liz sent me this reflection on her participation in TES (with her "humble apologies" for a late submission):

"I have enjoyed the energy of the combined group workshops and revelled in the growth that I’ve seen in the participants. I’ve personally benefitted from the supervisor workshops, because the discussion of the challenges unique to self-study supervision. It has been enlightening to learn from more experienced supervisors and to be able to compare our strategies for supporting our students. Trying to articulate these challenges in academic terms  and to share them through conferences and papers, in collaboration with other supervisors in the group has resulted in my growing confidence in the methodology to develop ethical, confident and critical researchers."

Even when she was very ill, Liz embodied the energy and growth that she highlighted in this reflection. And in her very humble way, she continually challenged us to "move out of 'stuckness'"(as she put it).  An example that is fresh in my mind is the activity that she led us in at the start of the self-study writing workshop in March this year. Liz  asked us to each respond in writing to this question: "How does your writer-self want your life to be?"  She then asked us each to give our writer-self a name. The next step was to interview someone else about what she or he had written and then to write our own piece to introduce our fellow writer to the group. Participants then shared what they had written about their fellow writers and we had a whole group discussion about our reflections on the writer-self  activity.

What really struck me was how almost all participants seemed to have said that they didn't think of themselves as "writers". When I looked through the participant evaluations, I noticed how  people commented on the power of naming and facing the writer-self -- they seemed to find it unsettling, provoking and illuminating. What struck me was how tentative and uncertain many of us seem to be about our writer-selves. While most of us seemed to be quite comfortable with our practitioner-selves and some of us with our researcher-selves, paying attention to the writer-self seemed to evoke a sense of unknowing, vulnerability, dissonance -- the writer-self appeared to be the self we all seemed to feel most uncertain of or vulnerable about -- as these participants' written comments suggest:

"I really enjoyed the session trying to figure out the notion of the writer self, even though I found it very difficult....How to understand and articulate my self as writer is something I have to really think about."

"I learned I had a ‘writer-self’ that I am not very sure of, and don’t particularly think is integrated with my artist/researcher/teacher self."

"I found today 'hard'. Kind of a bit 'above me' conceptually because I am only just starting to accept that I have a 'writer-self' that I am not quite familiar with." 

My written comment on the writer-self activities and discussion was:

"I learned that fears and anxieties about meeting expectations and ‘getting it right’ often constrain us in our writing / in being the writers we’d like to be."

(And I was including my writer-self in this observation...)

And Liz herself emphasised this sense of vulnerability about our writer-selves in her TES reflection:

"At some level the biggest challenge I face is being able to advise my postgrads on whether  their writing is “good enough”(Wisker, 2009)....I find my students often become ‘stuck’ between our very regular meetings. My challenge is to help them focus on one issue at a time, more importantly from my point of view is knowing what the catalytic focus might be based on their lives and aspirations."

And I think that there Liz captured the essence of TES -- Transformative Education/al Studies -- our studies are transformative -- they change us (and our world) -- when they are based on our lives and aspirations and  when we are constantly engaged in responding to the question: "How does your writer-self want your life to be?"

Two days before the self-study writing workshop, Liz emailed:

"This is going to be a wonderful ride."

And it was. And it will be.