This special issue draws together five papers presented at the Higher Education Close-Up 9 conference, held in Cape Town in November 2018. The theme of the conference was 'Higher Education in Contemporary Times, and papers covered a wide range of issues facing higher education in these complex times in which we now live, marked by political and social change, climate change, rapid technological advancement, and an ever-uncertain future. The 5 papers in this issue focus specifically on issues related to teaching, the scope of the Journal, looking at tutoring and ontological access, MOOCs and opening up knowledge to more diverse audiences, mathematics learning and students' self-belief, the future of universities of technology, and working with students from rural backgrounds making challenging transitions to higher education. 

This issue includes 5 original research articles and 3 book reviews. The topics dealt with in the articles include developing new academic lecturers through a targeted staff development programme in higher education, establishing a faculty-based writing centre at a South African university, engaging in post-qualitative research in rethinking and redesigning a design education curriculum development, engaging young black students from rural communities in negotiating their own knowledge-making practices as they move through university, and the place of indigenous knowledge alongside Western science. 

This issue presents four papers on issues related to academic staff development in South Africa, experiences of curriculum processes in the UK, discipline-related threshold crossing in doctoral education, and preparing engineering graduates for ethical professional practice. It also includes 3 book reviews on new books that were published in 2017 on postgraduate supervision, transformative pedgagogies and knowledge and change in African universities.

This issue begins with a very special editorial, in which our editor-in-chief, Vivienne Bozalek, pays tribute to our late Reviews Editor, Brenda Leibowitz, who passed away in April. All of the reviews in this issue were commissioned by Brenda, and all of the articles connect with issues in higher education that resonated deeply with Brenda: social justice, access and inclusion, and creating spaces for learning and teaching that embrace diversity, difference and care. 

This issue features research on academic staff development and communities of practice and support, enabling more successful and supported academic writing for university researchers, literacy development in Masters writing in a professional field, helping students to access and work with 'powerful knowledge' in a multicultural university context grappling with the legacy of coloniality, and confronting and challenging constraints and enablements to success as a Black woman academic in higher education.

 This special issue draws on the contributions from the 2016 International Consortium of Educational Development Conference (ICED) hosted for the very first time on African soil. The Higher Education Learning Teaching Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) co-hosted this conference in Cape Town, South Africa, with the theme,‘Ethics, care and quality in educational development’. The contributions to this special issue of CRiSTaL focus on the conference subthemes that explore various aspects of our practice through the lenses of ethics, care and quality enhancement. As much as the contributions tackled these conference themes, the authors enrich this edition with articles that are well researched and with a focus on innovative and reflective as well as practice-based focused approaches to teaching and learning.

This special issue includes 5 papers from South African and UK-based authors, as well as an invited paper from Dr Mary Lea and 3 book reviews. The papers address aspects of academic literacy and social justice in higher education, including physics and mathematics education, the role of religious faith as a tool for meaning making, challenging conceptions of decontextualised literacy, and bringing students' multiple language resources into teaching and writing to create more equitable and inclusive learning environments.

This issue includes 4 papers and 2 book reviews, and the subjects addressed include higher education as a public good, mentoring young researchers, social justice and human capabilities in higher education, new ways of approaching digital or online postgraduate education, and teaching masculinities in South Africa.

The papers in this issue address a range of concerns in higher education, including flexible provision of teaching and learning, academic writing education in the Sciences, teaching and learning grants and staff development, and academic literacy development at Masters level.

This issue's articles explore issues around student academic literacy development in the sciences,  teacher education in History, navigating the challenges of undertaking creative doctoral work, and the necessity of sound Humanities education and its relationship with the defence of academic freedom in South Africa. The issue also contains two book reviews of recent publications in higher education.

The articles in this issue challenge us to rethink discourses around transformation and knowledge within the university, as well as the kinds of environments that are conducive to both staff and student development.

This inaugural issue of Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning features publications from both South African and international authors. These papers deal with a range of pertinent issues in higher education and have resonance for a South African audience.