Robin Moore

Rob Moore is the Executive Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. This is a research institute established as a partnership between the Universities of Johannesburg and of the Witwatersrand, the Gauteng Provincial Government and organised local government. The GCRO undertakes research on city-region to inform government and civil society. Rob has a particular interest in the role of universities in the future of cities. Previously he served a seven-year term as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Partnerships and Advancement) at the University (2007 – 14). In this capacity he was responsible for advancing the University’s strategic purposes in partnership with government, industry, civil society and other universities. He joined Wits in 2006 as Director of Strategic Planning before being appointed as Deputy Vice Chancellor in 2007. He was seconded for some months as project director for South Africa’s Ministerial Review Committee on the National System of Innovation, a study conducted in 2010 and 2011 and published in 2012.

Prior to joining Wits, he spent twelve years (1992 – 2004) at the University of Cape Town researching and teaching in higher education studies. His research interests have focused on issues of higher education policy and institutional adaptation. In particular, he has published on issues of institutional responsiveness to policy, on curriculum reform, and on the development of management capacity in higher education.

His expertise in this area led to his secondment from UCT to the Council on Higher Education (CHE) from 2004 to 2006 where he held the post of Director of Institutional Audits in the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). In this role, he was responsible for carrying out the first iteration of the audits of institutional management systems of South African universities.

He is Chair of the Board of The Conversation Africa (TCA), he sits on the Boards the Southern African Liaison Office (SALO), and the Cradle of Humankind Trust (CoHT). For a number of years he was a Board member and the Chair for the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO), and was on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Higher Education Studies.