Jo Vearey is an Associate Professor and the Director of 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 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 as a Young Researcher. In 2014 and 2015, 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, a WOTRO funded project with the VU University, Amsterdam on migration and sex work, and partnerships with the University of Massachusetts Boston and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine‘s Faculty of Public Health and Policy and Gender, Violence and Health Unit.
maHp/ACMS director Professor Jo Vearey will be taking part in this South-South dialogue titled ‘Present and Imminent: Crises and Complexity in Mexico and South Africa’, organised by UNAM-Sudáfrica Centro de Estudios Mexicanos.
Read moremaHp/ACMS director, Professor Jo Vearey recently presented at the 6th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research panel session on ‘Building capacity for research on migration and health: A call to action’. Watch her presentation here.
Read moreAfrican Center for Migration and Society (ACMS) director, Professor Jo Vearey was recently quoted in this Thomson Reuters Foundation New’s article expressing her concern over possible “formal or de facto discrimination against undocumented migrants when it comes to vaccine access”.
Read moreAs countries begin to roll out Covid-19 vaccination programmes, maHp/ACMS director Professor Jo Vearey argues there is no place for ‘vaccine nationalism’; that the principle of equity in global health access must be at the fore.
Read moremaHp/ACMS Associate Professor Jo Vearey recently appeared on Newzroom Afrika urging African governments to deal with immigration during the Covid-19 pandemic collaboratively.
Read moreOn the Beitbridge border posts hundreds of Zimbabweans have been captured waiting for days in the line to escape the thirty day hard lockdown that was recently implemented. maHp/ACMS director Professor Jo Vearey spoke to Channel Africa about this humanitarian crises.
Read moreAccording to CMS/maHp director Jo Vearey, Sally Gandar, Rebecca Walker and Francois Venter, the government’s decision to focus on tracking, detaining and deporting migrants as they cross into South Africa is at the expense of the many systemic challenges faced in accessing documentation – including Covid certificates.
Read moreAssociate Professor Jo Vearey recently presented at the 67th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). Watch and read the full submission here.
Read moreACMS director Professor Jo Vearey chats to Radio 702’s Eusebius McKaiser.
Read moreACMS director, Associate Professor Jo Vearey discusses the effects of Covid-19 on migration, on Channel Africa.
Read moreLast night (14 April 2020) ACMS Professor Jo Vearey was interviewed by Godfred Akoto Boafo of Citi TV’s current affairs show ‘Face to Face’, about the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on migrants.
Read moreSouth Africa mustn’t forget the public — and that includes migrants and refugees — in its public health response to COVID-19, writes ACMS director, Associate Professor Jo Vearey.
Read moreBoth the United States and South Africa have punted increased border security as a way to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Here’s why South Africa should be thinking less about walls and more about amnesty as cases mount.
Read moreInternational solidarity, travel restrictions and the right to remain: why South Africa needs to actively engage all foreign migrants in its response to Covid-19.
Read moreACMS director, Associate Professor Jo Vearey discusses South Africa’s responses to the Covid-19 pandemic on the ‘Monday Morning Meetings on Migration’ show.
Read moreACMS director, Associate Professor Jo Vearey explains how the sanctimony of moving from blaming foreign migrants to now rendering them invisible in a critical public health moment will have implications for our response to Covid-19.
Read moreACMS Associate Professor Jo Vearey was recently part of an interview panel on the SABC News Unfiltered talk show that discussed migration and Covid-19 in South Africa.
Read moreACMS director Associate Professor Jo Vearey discusses migration in Africa on Channel Africa’s ‘African Dialogue’ show.
Read moreThe third post of ‘The Disorder of Things’ blog symposium on Sophie Harman’s ‘Seeing Politics’ is by maHp/ACMS director Jo Vearey.
Read moreHealth governance has an important role in dealing with global migration, argue maHp/ ACMS director Jo Vearey and colleagues.
Read moreIn this issue, insights into how migration and mobility are mediating health within an African urban context are brought together.
Read moreBBC World Service asks Associate Professor Jo Vearey to respond to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s comment about ‘foreign nationals’ overcrowding SA’s public health system.
Read moreAssociate Professor Jo Vearey of the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS, Wits University) discusses whether foreigners are really affecting South Africa’s public healthcare system on 702’s ‘The Best of Afternoon Drive with Joanne Joseph’. Listen to their interview below:
Read moreThe authors of this paper reflect on progress made in mainstreaming HIV in non-health sector departments, exploring factors that have enabled and hindered the process.
Read moreThis paper explores the potential risks associated with the blurring of global migration governance and health security agendas in Southern Africa, a region associated with high levels of population mobility, communicable, and – increasingly – non-communicable diseases.
Read moreDrawing on discussions with policy makers, research scholars, civil society, and United Nations agencies that attended the 2nd Global Consultation on Migration and Health – held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in February 2017 – the authors emphasize the urgent need for quality research on international and domestic (in-country) migration and health to support efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Read moreThis chapter describes the authors’ experiences in connecting a group of emerging Southern African scholars around the inherently interdisciplinary field of migration, urbanisation and health.
Read moreThis article provides an overview of the associations between migration and health in South Africa, and calls for the urgent development of ‘migration-aware’ health systems.
Read moreIn order to inform future research, an exploratory study investigating the maternal healthcare and help-seeking experiences of migrant women living in inner-city Johannesburg was undertaken.
Read moreCities of the global south—including Johannesburg—are associated with unplanned and unmanaged urban growth; poor urban governance (which is predominantly reactive rather than proactive); migration and mobility; and the resultant pressure on access to adequate services, including water, sanitation, housing, and healthcare.
Read moreIn this research project, the role of contemporary population mobility in mediating the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan African (SSA) is explored and recommendations for action to assist in strengthening responses to HIV – including the call for migration-aware programming – in the region will be made.
Read moreSex work – the consensual sale of sex between adults – is an important livelihood activity for some migrants in South Africa. In this research area, we explore intersections between sex work, migration, health and well-being.
Read moreSouth Africa’s public healthcare system responses seldom engage with migration. This exploratory study investigates migration profiles and experiences of primary healthcare (PHC) users.
Read moreRichter, M. and Vearey, J. (2016) Migration and sex work in South Africa: key concerns for gender and health. In: Gideon, J. (ed) Gender and Health Handbook. Edward Elgar Publishing: UK
Read moreVearey, J. (2016) Mobility, migration and generalised HIV epidemics: a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In: Thomas, F. (ed) Handbook of Migration and Health. Edward Elgar Publishing: UK
Read moreMigration provides opportunities for health and economic benefits, and has the potential to positively and negatively affect health systems. This paper outlines the authors’ current research and existing responses to migration and health in southern Africa.
Read moreStudies researching interpersonal violence (IPV) are associated with a range of ethical challenges. In this article, lessons are drawn from three case studies exploring the experiences of different groups of survivors and perpetrators…
Read moreSex work remains illegal and highly stigmatised in South Africa, resulting in sex workers – the majority of whom are internal or cross-border migrants – experiencing ongoing human rights violations and a high HIV burden.
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