Building a community of critical researchers: regenerating the academy Kerryn Dixon, Hilary Janks, Yvonne Reed and Susan Walden Abstract We attempt to ‘practice what we preach’ by writing a jointly authored paper in which we begin by describing the evolution of a programme which supports postgraduate students in Applied English Language Studies, some of whom are, or have become, staff members in the division, in other parts of the University of the Witwatersrand, in other South African universities or in universities elsewhere in Africa. This account is followed by three apprentice researcher stories which are used to support our main arguments about the value of new and more established researchers working together, about the value of working together within a common theoretical framework and about the possibilities each of these ways of working affords researchers to respond to important South African and African questions. . Introduction The theme of the 2010 Kenton conference, ‘A new era: re-imagining educational research in South Africa’, challenged the authors of this paper to critically reflect on and to theorise the research community-building practices which the division of Applied English Language Studies (AELS) at the University of the Witwatersrand has developed over almost two decades. When the division was established in 1992, none of the South African staff had doctorates. In eighteen years the division has qualified itself at the same time as producing 34 academics who currently work in seven South African institutions of higher learning and a further nine who work in universities on the continent. Given the reported concerns about shortages of ‘next generation’ academics, we suggest that it is important to understand how this has been achieved. Our argument is threefold. First, we stress the importance of establishing a community of researchers all working at different levels and at different stages of the research process. What this enables is a pedagogy of ‘each one teach