Dr Joanne Peers is a transdisciplinary researcher, educator, storylistener and author whose scholarship and creative practice are rooted in her Camissa, Cape Flats heritage. Her creative work includes the picturebook We’ve Got Brown on Our Skin Like the Stones in the Ocean, where storytelling becomes a way of remembering and restoring relationships with land and water. Dr Joanne Peers is a Researcher at the Origins Centre at The University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She holds a PhD from The University of Oulu in Finland in Environmental Humanities and Education Research. Her dissertation focussed on relationality through thinking with bodies, water, time, memory and spirituality. Joanne won the Finnish Education Research Association PhD competition 2025 and is the recipient of Best PhD award for 2024 at Oulu University. She is the awardee of a seed grant in the Engaged Scholarship against Climate Change (ESCC) project at The Vrije University of Amsterdam. Joanne is the Lead Researcher in the Voices of the Sea project through the University of Witwatersrand, in partnership with the Origins Centre, Save our Seas Foundation Shark Education Centre and Western Cape Education Department. Working hydropoetically in relational ways allows Joanne to approach issues of care, ethics and environmental justice.
We’ve Got Brown on Our Skin Like the Stones in the Ocean is a beautifully illustrated picture book inspired by the ancient stone ocean kraals of southern Africa. Through blue, brown, red, black, green, and yellow, it invites children and the adults who read with them to journey into an ancient story of colour, connection, and care.
Rooted in Indigenous knowledge and shaped through years of storylistening with children, educators, families, artists, and coastal communities, this book asks what might happen if we listened differently to the stories colours carry. It invites readers to wonder how colour holds memory, how belonging is nurtured through relationships, and how care can flow between people, living waters, and all living beings.
Part of the wider Crayons and Ocean Kraals project, this book is an invitation to gather together, to listen, to imagine, and to ask:
What colours live in our memories, and what stories will we draw for the future?
