Dr Joanne Peers is the Head of Academics at The Centre for Creative Education (CCE). She holds a PhD from The University of Oulu in Finland in Environmental Education and Education Research. Her dissertation focussed on relationality in environmental education and research through thinking with bodies, water, time, memory and space. Joanne lives and swims in the haunted landscape of Camissa, translated as “sweet water for all” in Kora, the Khoe-language, otherwise known as Cape Town in South Africa. Her interest in justice and activism in the Global South brings watery ways of relating to oceans, environments and education. The threads of relational entanglements live in her figuration of Relational Researcher can be traced on www.relationalresearcher.com. Her unique position of working in higher education and fulfilling the role as collaborator with resourced and under-resourced schools allows extensive worlding with theory and practice in education. Joanne shares her life with companion species (dogs and other critters) and is held in the care of being a mother and community with others. Participating in relational ways has enabled Joanne to approach issues of care, ethics, and the image of child and childhoods. A growing interest in transdisciplinary projects has become part of her work and contribution in the pursuit of environmental justice and education.

Selected publications

Peers, J. (2024). Hydropoetic relational bodies of environmental education research [PhD Dissertation]. University of Oulu, Finland.

Nxumalo, F. and Peers, J. (2024). Reconceptualizing early childhood education: Cartographic relational stories. Impact Factor: 0.6 14(3). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20436106241267834.

Martin, A., Peers, J., and Giorza, T. (2023). Meandering as learning: Co-creating care with Camissa Oceans in higher education. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning 11(Special Issue 2). https://epubs.ac.za/index.php/cristal/article/view/1691.