Rate My Professor Keely Blanch

Dr. Keely Blanch serves as a Professional Practice Fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago, Dunedin. In this role, she supports teaching, assessment, and curriculum development for distance-taught postgraduate programmes, including the Postgraduate Diploma in Obstetrics and Medical Gynaecology (PGDipOMG) and the Postgraduate Certificate in Women's Health (PGCertWHealth). Her contributions focus on enhancing educational delivery in women's health and obstetrics-related fields.

Keely Blanch earned her BA, Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (PGDipArts), Master of Arts (MA) in 2013, and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 2020, all from the University of Otago. Her MA thesis, "Identity, Facebook and education: students negotiating identity on a class' Facebook page," investigated how students manage identities on social media platforms within educational contexts. Her doctoral research, conducted through the College of Education, culminated in the thesis "Young people (re)conceptualising digital citizenship: Constructing ways of being and doing citizen(ship) 'online'," which explored young people's understandings of digital citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand amid increasing digital mediation of social interactions. Blanch's academic interests encompass social media in education and digital citizenship. Her scholarly output includes peer-reviewed articles such as "Five beginning teachers' reflections on enacting New Zealand's national standards" (Teaching and Teacher Education, 2016), "Mobility, place and affect in transnational teacher education graduates’ accounts of their first year teaching" (Teaching and Teacher Education, 2018), "Facebook in the classroom: Blended audiences and multiple front-stages" (International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2014), "Bedroom Culture: A Review of Research" (Space, Place, and Environment, 2016), "Beginning teachers as policy workers in Malaysia and New Zealand" (International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 2015), and "Future teachers debate charter schools on Facebook: analysing their political subjectivities" (Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2018). She has also published in orthodontics, co-authoring "Some orthodontists' experiences of volunteering for a community orthodontic initiative" (American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 2019), "Considering malocclusion as a disability" (Australasian Orthodontic Journal, 2019), "The impact of treatment cost on low SES families: an orthodontic viewpoint" (Australasian Orthodontic Journal, 2019), and "'Why, why, why do I have such big teeth, why?': Low socio-economic status and access to orthodontic treatment" (The New Zealand Dental Journal, 2018). Additionally, she contributed to conference proceedings with "I did it my way: Academic-decision-making explored through a Bourdieusian social-theory lens" (TERNZ Conference, 2022).