About the speaker

Professor Mantoa Mokhachane, FCPaeds, PhD, has served as Director of the Unit for Undergraduate Medical Education at the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg since 2020. Before transitioning into medical education in 2015, she spent 18 years practising as a neonatologist. Her scholarly interests lie in epistemic justice and the use of decolonial approaches within medical education. Her paper Rethinking Professional Identity Formation Amidst Protest and Social Upheaval: A Journey in Africa received the Research Paper Prize at the AMEE Conference in France in 2022.

In January 2026, she delivered an invited lecture titled “White Saviourism” during the Global International Child Health programme at the University of Münster in Germany. In May 2026, she delivered a keynote at UKZN HPE Symposium titled “Intersections of ubuntu values, community and space: impact on identity and belonging”. On the 29 th July 2026 she delivered a talk titled “Beyond Discipline: Reframing Unprofessional Student Conduct in South African Classrooms through Ubuntu, Justice and Educational Courage” at the UCT Professional Standards Committee Annual Professionalism Symposium. She has contributed book chapters on Future Directions and Disruptive Innovations in Medical Professionalism and “A Vernacular Reframing of Professionalism: Ubuntu in the Education of the Next Generation of Professionals.” 

She has been a member in various ethics committees in South Africa. She is currently a member of the SAGER Working Group, which published a letter in The Lancet titled Safeguarding Research Integrity: SAGER Guidelines, Research Ethics, and the Politics of Evidence. She has recently been appointed as an Associate Editor for the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ). In addition, she serves as part of the Guest Editorial team leading an article collection on Challenging Dominant Discourses of Professionalism Through Decolonial, Relational, and Contextually Grounded Perspectives.