At a time of robust public contestation about higher education in South Africa, At the Foot of the Volcano focuses on the personal journeys of university lecturers as ordinary people. The lecturers, based predominantly at the University of Cape Town, share a passion for inspiring South Africa's next generation of scientists, health care workers, social scientists, poets, essayists, musicians, urban planners, anthropologists and chemists.

Too often Information and Communication Technology is offered as the panacea for course content in uncertain times. At the Foot of the Volcano suggests that no amount of technological innovation can stand in the place of building relationships with students, finding ways to instil passion for our disciplines, and an awareness of the sources of structural inequality that underpin the current political climate across higher institutions.