Mary van der Riet

Mary is currently Assistant Professor at Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick. Her academic journey began in South Africa with work with mothers and kindergarten teachers in the foothills of the Amathole mountains in the Eastern Cape. Thinking first about learning, development and change from a Vygotskian framework, she focussed on the individual-social dialectic. We are because of others, so how is it that we are? This formed the foundation for puzzling the conundrum of HIV and behaviour change, one of the most significant health challenges to face South Africa. What are the ways in which our activity, generated socially, comes to be how we ‘behave’? Using change laboratory processes, historicity, and participatory research techniques, she collaborated with youth and adults to surface the contradictions and dilemmas of safe sex practices in contexts of gendered subjectivity. 

Within Warwick Medical School Mary brings qualitative and participatory research skills to various projects, for example, a co-production project addressing inequalities in maternal health care, and a collaboration with students and colleagues about ‘languaging’ in our diverse and complex higher education system. As a social science researcher in a medical science context, Mary is finding ways to bring the ‘social’ voice into teaching, research and community engagement processes. As a researcher with origins in the global south, Mary brings a critical lens to the dominant and ‘northern’ constructions of culture, health and illness. 

Mary incorporated her child care responsibilities into her research in South Africa, leaving an indelible impression on both mother and child!

Email: Mary.Van-Der-Riet@warwick.ac.uk

Affiliation: University of Warwick, United Kingdom

ResearchGate Profile: Mary van der Riet 

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7840-4089