Rebecca Walker
Biographic Data
| ID | 3742764 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca Walker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca |
| FAMILY NAME | Walker |
| SIGNATURE | WALKER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2063-9683 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Transformative encounters: Sally Rooney and the moral worlds of Natalia Ginzburg
This article discusses how Irish writer Sally Rooney takes up the moral universe outlined in the novels and essays of Jewish-Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg (1916–1991). Through a close reading of Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), it argues that Rooney partly draws her ethics of interpersonal entanglement from Ginzburg’s specifically Jewish ethical sensitivity to fragility and contingency and her essays on human relationships in the…
Race and income moderate the effect of parks on housing prices in a segregated city
Upholding the Right to Health in Contexts of Displacement: A Whole-of-Route Policy Analysis in South Africa, Kenya, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Sustainable Development Goals commit states to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) for all; yet displaced populations-including asylum seekers, refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and undocumented migrants-remain systematically excluded from national health systems across southern and eastern Africa. This paper applies a whole-of-route, rights-based framework to examine how legal status, policy implementation, and structural governance…
Closing the gap in the wrong direction” migration, health policy, and the exclusion of asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants from healthcare access in South Africa
South Africa is not merely failing to meet its UHC goals-it is actively retreating from them. Exclusionary practices, once informal, are now guiding policy. Ensuring healthcare is truly accessible, acceptable, and sustainable for all requires urgent policy, legal, and institutional reforms to protect healthcare access for all, irrespective of status. Without these actions, the most vulnerable will continue to be excluded from essential services, …
Broadening undergraduate university admission pathways: Student achievement success at course completion
The global demand for higher education has resulted in government imperatives and policies aimed to increase student participation from under-represented groups, such as those who reside outside urban areas and from low socio-economic backgrounds. In Australia, the recent Universities Accord report (2024) signals achieving a larger, fairer higher education system with broadening of access. Thus, it is timely to examine the mechanisms that may hav…
International Trauma-Informed Practice Principles for Schools (ITIPPS): Expert consensus of best-practice principles
Recognition that schools should be responsive to children who are impacted by adversity and trauma is burgeoning internationally. However, consensus regarding the necessary components of a trauma-informed school is lacking. This research developed expert-informed and internationally relevant best-practice trauma-informed principles for schools. A four-phase methodology included (i) identification of school-relevant trauma-informed practice progra…
Advancing green space equity via policy change: A scoping review and research agenda
Urban green spaces – including parks, trees, and other vegetated areas – are inequitably distributed in cities worldwide, as underserved groups, such as low-income and people of color, have significantly lower provisions of such resources. Motivated by the health benefits of green spaces, advocates and policymakers in several countries have sought to ameliorate these systemic inequities by implementing green space equity initiatives. Many such in…
Compliant and impetuous: The phenomenology of existence in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels
This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and …
Welcome, How Can I Help You? Design Considerations for a Virtual Reality Environment to Support the Orientation of Online Initial Teacher Education Students
Alongside the rapid and broad uptake of online learning in higher education, fully online students report feeling isolated and disconnected from their institutions. Although formal course content may be expertly designed to engage online learners, much of the information provided to support higher education students’ orientation to the institution and to study is presented online in a written static form. Such presentations may not be accessible …
“When a bad thing happens…you are better only when you are home: ” Alienation and mental health challenges experienced by Congolese and Somali migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa
This article explores the link between migration and alienation and its impact on the mental health and wellbeing of Congolese and Somali asylum seekers and refugees—two of the largest populations of displaced migrants in South Africa. Drawing on ethnographic research in Johannesburg, we highlight the various ways alienation is both imposed upon and experienced by migrants and argue that systemic dis integration, or acts of alienation, can be see…
Powers of Curriculum: Sociological Aspects of Education
Activating and reinforcing graduates’ capabilities: Early lessons learned from a Teaching Performance Assessment
Bringing up the Bodies: Material Encounters in Elsa Morante’s La Storia
This article addresses Elsa Morante’s La Storia (1974) in light of recent developments in critical and feminist theory surrounding the material environment and the body. It analyses the dynamics of material encounters in the novel from several perspectives: it views Rome as a ‘misanthropic city’ (Thrift 2008) and its bodies, human and otherwise, as fragile; it considers the specificity of female materialities as articulated in the novel; it discu…
A Language of Her Own: Willful Displacement and Nomadic Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri
In Other Words (2016) is the first of Jhumpa Lahiri’s writings to be published in Italian, charting the journey to self-expression enabled by her twenty-year relationship with this foreign language. Tracing Lahiri’s literary production, this article argues that the autobiographical prose of In Other Words is facilitated by a series of “willful” displacements, reworking and revising the notion of displacement, which is a pervasive theme of Lahiri’…
Picking Up the Pieces: Elena Ferrante's Global Poetics of Fracture
A Creative Storytelling Project with Women Migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa (Dispatch)
An evidence-based case for quality online initial teacher education
The rapid expansion of fully online delivery of initial teacher education (ITE) seen in the past decade has generated some concerns about impact on teacher quality. This is set within broader, sustained concerns about ITE generally. Much of the criticism of online ITE has been made without sufficient evidence to support the claims, largely due to the still-nascent evidence base. The data presented here contributes to that evidence base by providi…
Sex Work, Migration, and Human Trafficking in South Africa: From polarised arguments to potential partnerships
In South Africa, the conflation of sex work with human trafficking means that migrant/mobile sex workers are often framed as victims of trafficking while arguments for the decriminalisation of sex work are discounted due to claims about the risks of increased trafficking. This is despite the lack of clear evidence that trafficking, including in the sex industry, is a widespread problem. Sex worker organisations have called for an evidence-based a…
Migrant mothers and the burden of care: Reflections from Johannesburg
Labels, victims, and insecurity: An exploration of the lived realities of migrant women who sell sex in South Africa
Based on research work among cross-border migrant women who sell sex in South Africa, this paper examines the ways in which the label ‘victim’ of human trafficking ignores the complex realities of human mobility. We argue here that as state legislative and policy measures, in relation to human trafficking, justify the securitisation of borders and the curtailment of migrant rights, an accompanying hegemonic discourse serves to deny the agency of …
If this isn’t for my children, who is it for?’ Exploring experiences of structural violence among migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg
This article examines the vulnerabilities and forms of structural violence experienced by migrant mothers who sell sex. In Johannesburg, migrant sex workers face multiple vulnerabilities including abuse, discrimination, criminalisation, and many levels of violence, directed particularly at non-nationals. For migrant mothers selling sex, these vulnerabilities increase as they balance the responsibilities of providing for their dependants with the …
Negotiating the city: Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa
This article explores the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa – one of the most unequal cities in the world. Migrants who struggle to access the benefits of the city live and work in precarious peripheral spaces where they experience intersecting vulnerabilities associated with gender norms, race, and nationality. These vulnerabilities manifest as abuse, discrimination, criminali…
Selling Sex, Mothering and ‘Keeping Well’ in the City: Reflecting on the Everyday Experiences of Cross-Border Migrant Women Who Sell Sex in Johannesburg
Absent bodies and present memories: Marking out the everyday and the future in Eastern Sri Lanka
Drawing from ethnographic work carried out between 2005 and 2007, this article considers the ways in which a women’s network has developed strategies to find meaning around the absences of loved ones, killed or ‘disappeared’ during the decades of conflict in Sri Lanka. For most of these women, the fate of their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers is not known and the lack of answers means that they are unable to fully grieve and find closure. In…
Taking a Back Seat: The Uses and Misuses of Space in a Context of War and Natural Disaster
The east of Sri Lanka has been one of the most devastated and disrupted areas of the island since the civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) began in the early 1980s. Although I did not realize it at the time, the period during which I lived in the town of Batticaloa in order to carry out my PhD research (2005–2007) marked a distinctive and unusual time for the eastern region. Two major events were res…
Violence, the everyday and the question of the ordinary
2010). Violence, the everyday and the question of the ordinary. Contemporary South Asia: Vol. 18, Creating, changing, and recovering community: annual conference edition of the British Association for South Asian Studies, pp. 9-24
Negotiating the city: Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa
This article explores the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa – one of the most unequal cities in the world. Migrants who struggle to access the benefits of the city live and work in precarious peripheral spaces where they experience intersecting vulnerabilities associated with gender norms, race, and nationality. These vulnerabilities manifest as abuse, discrimination, criminali…
Can inquiry-based learning strengthen the links between teaching and disciplinary research
Inquiry‐based learning has been promoted as a student‐centred approach that can strengthen the links between teaching and research. This article examines the potential of inquiry‐based learning to strengthen the teaching–research nexus by analysing three case studies: a ‘structured inquiry’ third‐year endocrinology medicine module, a ‘guided inquiry’ second‐year political communications course and an ‘open inquiry’ third‐year ecology course. The …
Labels, victims, and insecurity: An exploration of the lived realities of migrant women who sell sex in South Africa
Based on research work among cross-border migrant women who sell sex in South Africa, this paper examines the ways in which the label ‘victim’ of human trafficking ignores the complex realities of human mobility. We argue here that as state legislative and policy measures, in relation to human trafficking, justify the securitisation of borders and the curtailment of migrant rights, an accompanying hegemonic discourse serves to deny the agency of …
A Creative Storytelling Project with Women Migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa (Dispatch)
Straight Talk”: The Effectiveness of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention for Heterosexuals with HIV/Aids
A quasi-experimental research study found that a 6-week psychoeducational group intervention was effective in alleviating stress, depression, and anxiety among eight heterosexual persons with HIV/AIDS in an experimental group. The group intervention consisted of both educational topics and psychological support. Scores on several measures changed significantly from pretest to posttest. A comparison group of heterosexual persons living with HIV/AI…
A Language of Her Own: Willful Displacement and Nomadic Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri
In Other Words (2016) is the first of Jhumpa Lahiri’s writings to be published in Italian, charting the journey to self-expression enabled by her twenty-year relationship with this foreign language. Tracing Lahiri’s literary production, this article argues that the autobiographical prose of In Other Words is facilitated by a series of “willful” displacements, reworking and revising the notion of displacement, which is a pervasive theme of Lahiri’…
Sex Work, Migration, and Human Trafficking in South Africa: From polarised arguments to potential partnerships
In South Africa, the conflation of sex work with human trafficking means that migrant/mobile sex workers are often framed as victims of trafficking while arguments for the decriminalisation of sex work are discounted due to claims about the risks of increased trafficking. This is despite the lack of clear evidence that trafficking, including in the sex industry, is a widespread problem. Sex worker organisations have called for an evidence-based a…
Third Wave Feminisms
If this isn’t for my children, who is it for?’ Exploring experiences of structural violence among migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg
This article examines the vulnerabilities and forms of structural violence experienced by migrant mothers who sell sex. In Johannesburg, migrant sex workers face multiple vulnerabilities including abuse, discrimination, criminalisation, and many levels of violence, directed particularly at non-nationals. For migrant mothers selling sex, these vulnerabilities increase as they balance the responsibilities of providing for their dependants with the …
Effectiveness of a psychoeducational and task-centered group intervention for family members of people with Aids
A quasi-experimental evaluation found that an eightweek psychoeducational and task-centered group intervention was effective in alleviating stress, perceived stigma, depression, and anxiety among 33 family members of people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome in an experimental group. Scores on several measures changed significantly from before the group began to after the intervention. Members of a comparison group had no significant change…
Heterosexuality, Feminism, Contradiction: On Being Young, White, Heterosexual Feminists in the 1990s
Effectiveness of a psychoeducational and task-centered group intervention for family members of people with Aids
A quasi-experimental evaluation found that an eightweek psychoeducational and task-centered group intervention was effective in alleviating stress, perceived stigma, depression, and anxiety among 33 family members of people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome in an experimental group. Scores on several measures changed significantly from before the group began to after the intervention. Members of a comparison group had no significant change…
Straight Talk”: The Effectiveness of a Psychoeducational Group Intervention for Heterosexuals with HIV/Aids
A quasi-experimental research study found that a 6-week psychoeducational group intervention was effective in alleviating stress, depression, and anxiety among eight heterosexual persons with HIV/AIDS in an experimental group. The group intervention consisted of both educational topics and psychological support. Scores on several measures changed significantly from pretest to posttest. A comparison group of heterosexual persons living with HIV/AI…
Third Wave Feminisms
Hospital care at home: An evaluation of a scheme for orthopaedic patients
We report on an evaluation of the practicality and acceptability of the 'Going Home Service', an early discharge intensive patient support scheme for orthopaedic patients in their own homes. Patient outcomes were assessed in terms of health and functional status and the impact on patient's carers was assessed. Eight-seven patients who were successfully discharged from the service were compared with 17 patients readmitted to hospital prior to thei…
Violence, the everyday and the question of the ordinary
2010). Violence, the everyday and the question of the ordinary. Contemporary South Asia: Vol. 18, Creating, changing, and recovering community: annual conference edition of the British Association for South Asian Studies, pp. 9-24
Can inquiry-based learning strengthen the links between teaching and disciplinary research
Inquiry‐based learning has been promoted as a student‐centred approach that can strengthen the links between teaching and research. This article examines the potential of inquiry‐based learning to strengthen the teaching–research nexus by analysing three case studies: a ‘structured inquiry’ third‐year endocrinology medicine module, a ‘guided inquiry’ second‐year political communications course and an ‘open inquiry’ third‐year ecology course. The …
Evaluating student perceptions of learning processes and intended learning outcomes under inquiry approaches
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is promoted as a teaching approach that can enhance student learning outcomes. IBL can be categorised according to scale (e.g. tasks, course/module/paper, degree), mode (structured, guided, open) and framing (information or discovery-oriented). Our research used a survey instrument to determine how student perceptions of learning processes and intended learning outcomes (ILOs) varied in response to courses with differ…
Consciousness-Raising in a Child Abuse Flame War over Fan Fiction
A flame war over depictions of child abuse in a fan fiction competition based on The L Word television series (Showtime, 2004-09) provided an opportunity for feminists and others to deliberate over the issue of child abuse. Various tactics were used, including storytelling and the narration of intimate and personal stories of abuse, as well as more confrontational and personally derisive tactics. The flame war revealed taken-for-granted assumptio…
Taking a Back Seat: The Uses and Misuses of Space in a Context of War and Natural Disaster
The east of Sri Lanka has been one of the most devastated and disrupted areas of the island since the civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) began in the early 1980s. Although I did not realize it at the time, the period during which I lived in the town of Batticaloa in order to carry out my PhD research (2005–2007) marked a distinctive and unusual time for the eastern region. Two major events were res…
Absent bodies and present memories: Marking out the everyday and the future in Eastern Sri Lanka
Drawing from ethnographic work carried out between 2005 and 2007, this article considers the ways in which a women’s network has developed strategies to find meaning around the absences of loved ones, killed or ‘disappeared’ during the decades of conflict in Sri Lanka. For most of these women, the fate of their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers is not known and the lack of answers means that they are unable to fully grieve and find closure. In…
Selling Sex, Mothering and ‘Keeping Well’ in the City: Reflecting on the Everyday Experiences of Cross-Border Migrant Women Who Sell Sex in Johannesburg
If this isn’t for my children, who is it for?’ Exploring experiences of structural violence among migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg
This article examines the vulnerabilities and forms of structural violence experienced by migrant mothers who sell sex. In Johannesburg, migrant sex workers face multiple vulnerabilities including abuse, discrimination, criminalisation, and many levels of violence, directed particularly at non-nationals. For migrant mothers selling sex, these vulnerabilities increase as they balance the responsibilities of providing for their dependants with the …
Negotiating the city: Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa
This article explores the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa – one of the most unequal cities in the world. Migrants who struggle to access the benefits of the city live and work in precarious peripheral spaces where they experience intersecting vulnerabilities associated with gender norms, race, and nationality. These vulnerabilities manifest as abuse, discrimination, criminali…
Migrant mothers and the burden of care: Reflections from Johannesburg
Labels, victims, and insecurity: An exploration of the lived realities of migrant women who sell sex in South Africa
Based on research work among cross-border migrant women who sell sex in South Africa, this paper examines the ways in which the label ‘victim’ of human trafficking ignores the complex realities of human mobility. We argue here that as state legislative and policy measures, in relation to human trafficking, justify the securitisation of borders and the curtailment of migrant rights, an accompanying hegemonic discourse serves to deny the agency of …
An evidence-based case for quality online initial teacher education
The rapid expansion of fully online delivery of initial teacher education (ITE) seen in the past decade has generated some concerns about impact on teacher quality. This is set within broader, sustained concerns about ITE generally. Much of the criticism of online ITE has been made without sufficient evidence to support the claims, largely due to the still-nascent evidence base. The data presented here contributes to that evidence base by providi…
Sex Work, Migration, and Human Trafficking in South Africa: From polarised arguments to potential partnerships
In South Africa, the conflation of sex work with human trafficking means that migrant/mobile sex workers are often framed as victims of trafficking while arguments for the decriminalisation of sex work are discounted due to claims about the risks of increased trafficking. This is despite the lack of clear evidence that trafficking, including in the sex industry, is a widespread problem. Sex worker organisations have called for an evidence-based a…
A Creative Storytelling Project with Women Migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa (Dispatch)
Activating and reinforcing graduates’ capabilities: Early lessons learned from a Teaching Performance Assessment
Bringing up the Bodies: Material Encounters in Elsa Morante’s La Storia
This article addresses Elsa Morante’s La Storia (1974) in light of recent developments in critical and feminist theory surrounding the material environment and the body. It analyses the dynamics of material encounters in the novel from several perspectives: it views Rome as a ‘misanthropic city’ (Thrift 2008) and its bodies, human and otherwise, as fragile; it considers the specificity of female materialities as articulated in the novel; it discu…
A Language of Her Own: Willful Displacement and Nomadic Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri
In Other Words (2016) is the first of Jhumpa Lahiri’s writings to be published in Italian, charting the journey to self-expression enabled by her twenty-year relationship with this foreign language. Tracing Lahiri’s literary production, this article argues that the autobiographical prose of In Other Words is facilitated by a series of “willful” displacements, reworking and revising the notion of displacement, which is a pervasive theme of Lahiri’…
Picking Up the Pieces: Elena Ferrante's Global Poetics of Fracture
Powers of Curriculum: Sociological Aspects of Education
Welcome, How Can I Help You? Design Considerations for a Virtual Reality Environment to Support the Orientation of Online Initial Teacher Education Students
Alongside the rapid and broad uptake of online learning in higher education, fully online students report feeling isolated and disconnected from their institutions. Although formal course content may be expertly designed to engage online learners, much of the information provided to support higher education students’ orientation to the institution and to study is presented online in a written static form. Such presentations may not be accessible …
Sociology (20 works) · Political science (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Art (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Criminology (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Law (6 works)