Mignonne Breier lives in Cape Town but she grew up in the Eastern Cape and research on the history of that province is her passion. Her day jobs have included journalism, academic lecturing and research and researcher support and development. She has a BJourn degree from Rhodes University and a MPhil and PhD in Education from the University of Cape Town. She started her career as a journalist, working as a reporter on newspapers in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria and as a freelancer for national women’s magazines. After a spell of teaching in the Professional Communication Unit at UCT, she embarked on a research career, working as a researcher in adult and higher education at the University of the Western Cape and the Human Sciences Research Council for fifteen years and running Researcher Development Programmes for early career academics at UCT for ten years.

She is currently an honorary research associate in UCT’s School of Education. She is the author of the 2013 “Letters to My Son” and has also had poetry and short stories published.