Rate My Professor Jayashree Panjabi

Jayashree Panjabi earned a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History from the University of Otago in 1979, with her honours dissertation titled 'Milton, the rural depression experience.' She further pursued a Post Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Communication from the University of Auckland and a NZQA Diploma in Adult Education from Aoraki Polytechnic. Her extensive professional career encompasses television production, educational programme coordination, museum management, and university administration. Beginning in 1980 as a presenter on the children's programme Play School, she advanced to roles as director and producer at TVNZ from 1983 to 1991, helming documentaries including 'Philippine Affair' (1988), selected among the top ten documentaries of the decade at the Hawaii International Film Festival, and 'Fragile Futures' (1989), which garnered a gold medal at an Italian festival for medical and science films. As a freelancer from 1991, she produced acclaimed works such as 'Sex, Power and Birth Control,' receiving a Certificate of Merit at the 1994 WorldFest in Texas, alongside children's series for Taylormade Productions.

In 1998, Panjabi joined Otago Museum as Exhibitions and Community Programmes Manager, followed by coordinating the Television, Theatre and Radio course at Aoraki Polytechnic in 2000. From 2002, she served as Senior Producer at Natural History New Zealand in Dunedin, producing documentaries like 'Wild Secrets' (2002), multiple 'Megastructures' episodes including 'World’s Smart Tower,' and 'China Circus' (2007), distributed internationally on channels such as National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, and NHK. Transitioning to higher education administration in 2012, she worked nearly six years as Enterprise Manager in the University of Otago's Research and Enterprise office. She subsequently managed the Enterprise team in the Research Office at Victoria University of Wellington before assuming the role of Operations Manager for Genomics Aotearoa, hosted in the Department of Biochemistry within the Health Sciences division at the University of Otago, where she contributed to its business case development. Panjabi co-authored the 2015 publication 'Can a Short Intensive Course Affect Entrepreneurial Ability, Knowledge and Intent, or Further Entrepreneurial Study? An Assessment of the SEED Programme, Dunedin, New Zealand' alongside colleagues from Otago institutions. She also serves as a Justice of the Peace associated with the University of Otago.