Joanne has been teaching for more than 30 years and is a passionate advocate for a UWC education which she first learned about when she met her husband Adrian, a UWC graduate, at university in 1986! She believes deeply in the UWC mission and promotes UWC values in her teaching, her leadership and her interaction with others. Joanne loves teaching English literature especially South African protest literature and post-apartheid works. She has a Master’s degree in Linguistics with a special focus on the emergence of new “Englishes” and so enjoys and appreciates the multilingual contexts and challenges of UWC communities. 

Joanne grew up in South Africa but has lived and worked in rural Botswana (on the edge of the Okavango Delta) and The Kingdom of Eswatini where she was the Deputy Head Academic at our sister college, Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA.  Joanne is also passionate about animals and animal welfare. She was very involved in animal rescue and the running of sterilisation clinics for domestic animals in rural Eswatini. She loves the African bush, the mountains and the sea. She has two children – Megan who is studying Veterinary Medicine in South Africa and Daniel who is studying Film and Media studies at Colorado College - both of whom are UWC graduates.