Lucia Thesen is an associate professor in Language Development in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Having worked in academic literacies since the late 1980’s, I have a long view of the changing academic development field at UCT. My current interests are in the politics of writing and knowledge-making and alternative postgraduate writing pedagogies. I have co-edited two books – Academic literacy and the languages of change (2006, with Ermien van Pletzen) and Risk in academic writing: Postgraduate students, their teachers and the making of knowledge (2013 – with Linda Cooper)