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Jessa
Rogers (Photo courtesy of ANU)
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Wiradjuri woman Jessa Rogers is a 2017 Fulbright scholar based
at Harvard as a fellow from her role as Assistant Professor in Education
at the University of Canberra. Jessa is a Fellow in the Department
of Anthropology, working with the Peabody Museum and based at HUNAP
for the length of her fellowship. Within her Aboriginal research,
Jessa is furthering the development of Photoyarn, an arts-based
Indigenous research method she is has been developing with Aboriginal
and Maori girls attending boarding schools in Australia and New
Zealand. Jessa will spend time researching with Kanaka Maoli girls
attending Kamehameha Schools in Hawai'i, looking at their boarding
experiences during her Harvard Fellowship.
Jessa is working with the Peabody Museum's archival photographic
collection of Native, Indigenous and Pacific photographs, focused
on historical photographs of Native children in boarding schools.
She is developing a visual methodology underpinned by Indigenous
worldview, drawing on aspects of relatedness theory and visual sovereignty
toward re-visioning colonial depictions of Native peoples in colonial
residential education.
Over the past decade Jessa has held roles as program director,
head teacher and classroom teacher in both primary, middle and secondary
schools teaching Indigenous studies, creative arts and social science,
before moving to university lecturing 5 years ago. In 2015 Jessa
became Australia's youngest Aboriginal school principal, when she
opened Australias only boarding school for Indigenous teenage
mothers, Cape York Girl Academy, which is one of only two Indigenous
girls boarding schools in Australia. These experiences led her to
her current research with Indigenous students in boarding schools
internationally.
Jessa will be based at HUNAP until mid-January 2018, when she
returns to Australia to have her PhD conferred at the Australian
National University.
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