About Mignonne

Researcher, journalist and editor

An introduction

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.

See Mignonne’s Google Scholar profile for details of some of her many academic publications and their citations.

More about Mignonne

After the death of her older son, Matthew, in 2007, Mignonne changed gear professionally, took a non-academic, researcher development position at UCT and used her spare time to write about matters even closer to her heart than South Africa’s education system. Letters to my son, a memoir about the death of her son, was published by Kwela in 2013. Bloody Sunday: The nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s secret massacre was published by Tafelberg in 2021. The book has its origins in a family connection to Irish nun, Sister Aidan Quinlan. Mignonne spent seven years of her spare time researching the life, death and memorialisation of Sister Aidan and the police massacre before and after her killing. The research involved numerous trips to and from East London, a trip to Ireland and many hours in archives in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town.

The research was supported by the Henry Nxumalo Foundation for investigative journalism and the book was recently shortlisted for best non-fiction monograph by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) and for the Sunday Times Literary Award for non-fiction.

Currently, when she isn’t working on her next book, Mignonne freelances as an editor and research development consultant.. She lives in Muizenberg with her husband, retired journalist David Breier. Their son Daniel, and his wife Jessica, also live in Cape Town.

Other publications by Mignonne Breier

Here are some of the book and monograph titles:

Erasmus J and Breier M (Eds.) (2009) Skills shortages in South Africa: case studies of key professions. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Breier M, Wildschut A and Mgqolozana T (2009) Nursing in a New Era: the profession and education of nurses in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Breier M, (2008) The RPL Conundrum: Recognition of Prior Learning in a teacher upgrading programme. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Breier M with Wildschut A (2006) Doctors in a Divided Society: the profession and education of medical practitioners in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Breier M (Ed.) (2001) Curriculum Restructuring in Higher Education in Post-apartheid South Africa. Bellville: Education Policy Unit.

Prinsloo M and Breier M (Eds.) (1996) The Social Uses of Literacy. Cape Town: Sached Books and Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishers.