Dr Jeanne-Marie Viljoen

Jeanne-Marie is a lecturer in literary and cultural studies at UniSA Creative where she teaches & researches contemporary literature and visual storytelling as a way of solving social problems & imagining new futures.  Her work is about the unique role that art & aesthetics plays in helping us think through intractable problems in contemporary times because of the ways in which art helps us capture what lies beyond language & helps us envision situations in which experience/data may not be immediately visible.

This has lead her to focus on applying aesthetic theory, postcolonial theory, affect theory and theories of haptic visuality to visual and textual communications and media, in order to study problems with the representation of marginal groups & stigmatised experiences.

Her interdisciplinary international training as well as living and working in contested states with violent histories (such as Apartheid South Africa, North Cyprus & Australia) drive her engagement with decolonisation. Her research primarily centres on a number of visual narrative forms such as non-fictional comics and animated documentary films. This work has lead to publications, presentations, research supervision and the design and delivery of courses on the use of images to communicate trauma. Her work on mobile learning has lead to research projects and teaching tools designed to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital in the design of learning environments. Her work on communicating wellbeing and belonging in situations of high cultural and linguistic diversity has lead to successful research collaborations and grant applications.

She is a member of the ‘Creative People, Products and Places (CP3’) research concentration in the University's 'Transforming Societies' research stream. She is an external examiner and adjunct supervisor in the Department of English Studies at the University of South Africa and she is a regular reviewer for articles in the Social Identities Journal. She is also a member of the following professional organisations: The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (Melbourne); The Memory Studies Association & The Cultural Studies Association of Australasia.

2020 - present, reveiwer for the Journal of International Students         

2020 – member & reviewer for The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (Melbourne)

2020 – member, Memory Studies Association

2016 – present, reviewer for Social Identities Journal (UK)

2016 – present, member of Cultural Studies Association of Australasia & reviewer for 'Continuum'

2012 – present, reviewer for English Academy Review (RSA)       

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master of Arts University of Pretoria

• Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults University of Cambridge

• Bachelor of Arts University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

• Honours Bachelor of Arts University of South Africa

Work history

English Studies lecturer, University of South Africa,   2011- 2012

Reading & writing facilitator, University of South Africa, 2010 - 2011

Research Assistant, Witwatersrand Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2009-2010

Learning materials developer, Unit for Distance Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2002 - 2008

Lecturer in English literature & instructional design, Girne American University, North Cyprus, 2007