Dr Mala Singh is currently Honorary Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University, South Africa. She was formerly Professor of International Higher Education Policy in the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at the Open University, United Kingdom, and Professor Extraordinaire in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University in South Africa. She was the founding Executive Director of the Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education in South Africa. She has a doctorate in philosophy and was formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa (now merged into the University of KwaZulu-Natal).

She has published in the fields of philosophy and higher education. Her areas of interest include social justice, the public good and higher education; the relationship between knowledge and social change; truth and truthfulness in the body politic, international and comparative higher education; and knowledge society/economy discourses and their implications for higher education.

She is a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa; serves on the Board of the National Research Foundation and the Council on Higher Education in South Africa; and is a member of the Council of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and of the University of KwaZulu Natal. She has been a member of UNESCO committees on higher education and research. She is on the editorial boards of Higher Education Policy and the Journal of Higher Education in Africa. She has been a member of the Council of the United Nations University in Tokyo, served on the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications and has been a member of the European Register Committee.

She has held a Research Fellowship in the Southern African Research Programme at Yale University in 1990/; and a DAAD Fellowship (German Academic Exchange Programme) at the University of Cologne, Germany in 1980/1. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York in 2008/9. In 2014 she was awarded the Charles and Monique Moraze Prize by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France in recognition of her work in the area of education and society.