Rate My Professor Vivienne Anderson

Professor Vivienne Anderson serves as Dean of the College of Education and Professor at the University of Otago. She holds a Diploma of Teaching (DipTch), Bachelor of Education (BEd), Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (PGDipArts), and PhD in Education and Anthropology from the University of Otago, awarded in 2008 for her research on the experiences of international and New Zealand women in New Zealand higher education. Anderson commenced her professional career as a primary school teacher in Christchurch and Palmerston North during the 1990s and early 2000s. Relocating to Dunedin in 2002, she balanced postgraduate studies with parenting, later working as an educational researcher in the Faculty of Dentistry. She progressed through roles as lecturer and senior lecturer in the College of Education, and as senior lecturer and academic developer in the Higher Education Development Centre. In November 2020, she returned to the College of Education as Associate Dean, assuming the Deanship in February 2022.

Anderson teaches courses in educational sociology, intercultural education, diversity and inclusion, gender and education, critical theoretical perspectives, and qualitative research methods. Her research focuses on educational mobilities, education pathways, gender equity, migration and education, and education policy. She has led funded projects including the Ministry of Education Teaching & Learning Research Initiative Grant (2020–2023) as Principal Investigator for supporting refugee-background students' secondary to tertiary transitions, and a University of Otago Research Grant (2023–2024) on effective teaching for refugee-background students in schools. Notable publications encompass 'Good teaching as care in higher education' (2020), 'Precarity, fear and hope: Reflecting and imagining in higher education during a global pandemic' (2020), 'Photovoice as a research method for higher education research' (2020), and ''World-travelling': a framework for re-thinking teaching and learning in internationalised higher education' (2014). She supervises doctoral candidates on topics including refugee volunteering, teacher wellbeing, and gender discrimination in academia. Anderson contributes to the University of Otago Equity Advisory Committee, the Otago Tertiary Chaplaincy Trust Board, and serves as Associate Director of the Centre for Global Migrations. She presented her Inaugural Professorial Lecture in August 2024 on education's promise in displacement and resettlement contexts.