Janet de Vigne
Teaching Fellow
- Moray House School of Education and Sport, ILE
- University of Edinburgh
Contact details
- Email: janet.devigne@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Moray House School of Education and Sport, CH 2.04
- City
- University of Edinburgh (Holyrood Campus)
- Post code
- EH8 8AQ
Background
Janet de Vigne is an actor, singer and academic based in Edinburgh. She has been teaching at the University of Edinburgh for 14 years.
Janet teaches on the MSc TESOL and on various ITE programmes in the disciplines of creativity, the expressive arts, drama, language education, social justice and research methods.
Janet’s interest in drama and the education curriculum includes an active research interest in embodied learning. Her PhD (awarded by Lancaster University) explores the lived experience of Returners to Academe (RtAs) whose experience of secondary schooling was less than satisfactory (in their terms).
As an actor, Janet won the Leon Sinden award at Pitlochry Festival Theatre for her portrayal of Mrs Fraser in Stepping Out, a role she reprised alongside Anita Harris and Brian Capron in the nationwide tour of 2010. IN 2008, Janet played the roles of Ada the German tourist and Mrs Mac (voice only) in the multi Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. She has appeared in other films, notably the cult horrors Grader (2012) and Baobhan Sith (2014) directed by David Hutchinson. Her latest work includes: 2018/19 The Last Days of (Hu)mankind by Karl Kraus (alongside the Olivier award winning post Brechtian punk band, The Tiger Lillies) in Leith, Katowice (Poland) and Bielefeld (Germany), and 2022-23 'In die Schritte Nemesis', a re-working of the play by Nicolai Evreinov by the International Laboratory Ensemble at the Staatstheater Braunschweig and Theaterlabor, Bielefeld. Directed by Yuri Birte Anderson, this devised work explores the background to the Stalin show trials of the 1930s. (This production was nominated for the German Critics' ensemble award, alongside work by Robert Wilson).
As a singer, Janet trained as an operatic soprano at the GSMD London. She has sung title or lead soprano roles in Aida, Nabucco, Turandot, Clemenza di Tito, Cosi fan Tutte, Walkure (Sieglinde) etc. Premieres include: The Saint of Bleecker Street - Scotland (Menotti, cond. Richard Lewis) and Das Lied der Nacht, UK (Gal, cond, Robert Dick). Currently working on Ariadne (Ariadne auf Naxos, Strauss). Janet is in demand as a concert soloist, but also sings jazz - specialising in the works of Cole Porter and George Gershwin.
Janet enjoys theorising about education, thinking with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. aShe was the Programme Director of the Masters in TESOL at Edinburgh during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Publications include:
Deconstructing and Re-privileging the Education System for Space
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 24, 2023
de Vigne, J 2022 Why Should I get a Degree to do a Minimum Wage Job? ECEC in Scotland, Past and Present in Caroli, D (Ed) 2023 History of Early Education Institutions in Europe, from WWII until the Recent Reforms, Bologna, Clueb (university of Bologna) pp159-172
Human conflict resolution in a non-Terran context
Oxford University Press Oxford eBooks, Dec 15, 2022
Space and Society, 2016
Are We There yet? Pursuing a Utopian Ideal in Education in Space
Space and Society, 2015
Education and Liberty in Space
Space and Society, 2014
Postgraduate teaching
MSc TESOL: course organiser: Second Language Teacher Education
This course aims to expand students' vision of what langauge teacher training could be, by taking them into the potentiality as learnscapes of the National Museum of Scotland, the beach, and the art rooms, as well as exploring the latest evidence based research into language teacher education.
Project activity
Die Schritte Nemesis: world premiere of Nicolai Evreinov's play of the same name, sponsored by the University of Zurich: a study in betrayal based on the show trials held by Stalin in the 1930s. Role: Nemesis, staged: Staatstheater, Braunschweig, Germany in June 2022
Playing Beyond CLIL: Prof Do Coyle (lead) 2019-2021 (Erasmus)
The Last Days of Mankind: 2014-18 4 year exploration (dramatic, embodied) of Karl Kraus' Die Letzten Tagen der Menschheit ( chronicle of the first world war) culminating in performances in Leith, Katowice and Bielefeld with Teatr Apart (Poland), Theatre Arsene (France), Theaterlabor (Germany), Plavo Pozoriste (Serbia), Smashing Times (Ireland) artists from the Ukraine and the Tiger Lilies.