Social justice and institutional responsiveness across unequal universities: Reflective narratives from South African higher education

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Social justice in higher education is frequently articulated through policy and institutional reform, yet its enactment remains uneven across unequal university systems. This article examines how equity, justice, and institutional responsiveness are understood and negotiated through reflective narratives of two Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) fellows situated within historically disadvantaged and historically advantaged South African universities. Using a collaborative reflective narrative methodology informed by autoethnographic principles and analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, the study identifies five interrelated themes: supervision as a site of care and exclusion; institutional positioning and resource disparities; academic identity, gender, and power; publishing and epistemic justice; and the emotional labour of academic work. The findings demonstrate that social justice is shaped not only by structural inequalities, but also by relational, epistemic, and institutional practices. In response, the article advances the Higher Education Holistic Systems Responsiveness Framework (HE-HSRF) as a contextually derived conceptual heuristic for critically examining institutional responsiveness and equity-oriented transformation in higher education.