This special issue contributes to the vibrant debates concerning the 'responses and intensifying inequalities in the Global South' underway with regard to COVID-19 and the subsequent crises of higher education. With neoliberal globalization in a deeper crisis by the pandemic, transforming higher education and teaching configurations in ways that appease the rich and powerful players, while simultaneously seeking to neutralize forms of equity in education. Rather than pointing fingers at the broken structures and wider external economic framework, we argue that re-centring the humanistic, holistic and bottom-up approach that frames the post-pandemic higher education offers a more useful framework for understanding educational transformation in the contemporary period.