Jo Vearey is an Associate Professor with the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand. She holds an Honorary Fellowship with the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Senior Fellowship at the Centre for Peace, Development and Democracy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2015, Jo was awarded a Humanities and Social Science Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. Jo coordinates the Migration and Health Project Southern Africa (maHp). Involving a series of unique research and public engagement projects, maHp aims to explore (and evaluate) ways to generate and communicate knowledge in order to improve responses to migration, health and well-being in the SADC region.
Jo holds a MSc in the Control of Infectious Diseases (LSHTM, 2003), a PhD in Public Health (Wits, 2010), and has been rated by the National Research Foundation. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Jo received a Friedel Sellschop Award from the University of the Witwatersrand for outstanding young researchers. She was a Marie Curie Research Fellow in 2013, at the UNESCO Chair on Social and Spatial Inclusion of Migrants, University of Venice (SSIM-IUAV), Venice, Italy.
With a commitment to social justice and the development of pro-poor policy responses, Jo’s research explores international, regional, national and local responses to migration, health, and urban vulnerabilities. Her research interests focus on urban health, public health, migration and health, the social determinants of health, HIV, informal settlements and sex work. Jo is particularly interested in knowledge production, dissemination and utilisation including the use of visual and arts-based methodologies.
Jo has a range of international collaborations, including an ESRC-NRF funded project with the University of Edinburgh, and partnerships with the University of Massachusetts Boston, Linköpping University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Jo teaches and supervises MA and PhD students, and coordinates and teaches the MA module on the Psychosocial and Health Consequences of Forced Migration that runs in the second semester.
Areas of supervision: migration and health; HIV; informal settlements; urban health; livelihoods; sex work
