When Dr Joy Petersen considered doing a doctoral study, she imagined her research would focus on mentoring. As First-Year Student Experience Coordinator and Residence Head at the Centre for Student Life and Learning, she had spent years coordinating the University’s mentor programme. It seemed the obvious path. But the the upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic quietly rewrote her research trajectory.

Living in residence with a small group of students who remained on campus during lockdown, she found herself inhabiting what she calls “an epiphany encounter in a liminal space”. It was this experience – intimate, disorienting and quietly transformative – that prompted her supervisor, Prof Aslam Fataar, to ask a deceptively simple question: “Tell me what you think happened during the pandemic.” 

Upon his request she wrote short prose to record the profound shift she experienced. That written reflection became the seed of Petersen’s PhD. Pandemic Tales, an article she published on LitNet in 2020, drew wide attention and opened a pathway to deeper inquiry. Under Fataar’s supervision, she began tracing the educational journeys of the first-generation students she had lived alongside. Her longitudinal study followed who these students were before arriving at university, how they navigated their early experiences at SU, and how the lockdown shaped their unfolding identities. 

A pedagogy of care and becoming

At the heart of Petersen’s dissertation is an integration of humanising and care-centred pedagogies aimed at cultivating epistemic virtues – dispositions and qualities such as intellectual humility, curiosity, an openness to engage and a will to learn. Her research follows students across several years, capturing their pre-pandemic histories, their shared experiences during lockdown, and their later reflections three years on. What emerges is a textured account of epistemic becoming – the gradual formation of agency and intellectual character. 

Petersen speaks with admiration about the students’ growth. “They arrived with dreams and aspirations – and they refused to allow the pandemic to derail their plans.” Their pandemic encounter, framed as a Residential Education and Support Programme, became a catalyst for the students’ transformation. They became intentionally engage in student life and in class, sought leadership opportunities and developed habits of deep reflection. “They became contemplative,” she says. “They asked themselves the hard questions – about their beliefs, their cultures, their life goals – and they did so productively and purposefully.”

Transformation, relationship and the work of belonging

After nine years at SU, Petersen’s understanding of transformation has matured. 
“Transformation is slow, and if done with sincerity, the results can be equitable and enduring,” she says. “It depends on each of us doing the work of changing ourselves and our thinking – to positively shape our future.”

Petersen credits her family for helping her through the highs and lows of her research journey. “I’m deeply grateful to my husband, Michael, who has continually replenished my empty cup and cared for my sometimes-weary soul. By offering me the gift of space, time, and solitude, he helped bring this project to fruition. My children, Wade and Lotti, and my grandchild, Flora, have been my constant sources of inspiration and the quiet heartbeat of my motivation.”

She also pays tribute to her supervisor for the “amazing learning experience”. “Thank you for believing in me and bringing this thesis into the light!”

Looking to the future, Petersen is turning her attention to how universities might cultivate intellectual virtues in an era of accelerated technological change. “We cannot only teach young people about knowledge,” she argues. “We must teach them how to use knowledge – and how to use AI – intelligently, discerningly, prudently. Knowledge is everywhere now; it is no longer a scarce commodity.”

Her message to students entering an unpredictable world is rooted in her research.
“My work shows the transformative role of care and humanizing pedagogies in nurturing intellectual virtues such as integrity, intellectual humility, tenacity and courage.” She hopes graduates will engage these virtues with greater intention as they navigate the complex professional landscape.

Finding stillness, finding purpose

Through her doctoral journey, Petersen has embraced a philosophy that both steadies and guides her: learning is not only an academic pursuit but a “posture of being”; and meaning often reveals itself in moments of quiet stillness.

She finds such stillness on early-morning walks through the Coetzenburg mountains or along the river – gentle rituals that “provide the salve for my soul.”

People often remark that she lives her name. She smiles as she recalls describing her life philosophy to a student: “Chasing joy, finding joy, and (now) living joy.” It is a sentiment woven through her work with students, her scholarship, and the relationships she continues to nurture – a testament to the becoming that shaped her, just as she has helped shape others.