Staff Profiles

PhD Culture and Media Studies  (UKZN)

MEd  TESP  (Exeter)

PGDE   (UB)

BA Humanities (UB)

Irene Segopolo's areas of professional experties and competency are rooted in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Social Semiotics analysis of print and multi-modal texts. Irene is very keen on participatory communication approaches and strategies for social and behaviour change and an advocate of interdisciplinary research.

Facilitated in various forums and to name a few: Academic writing for UB postgraduate students; research pitso at CSSU and shared thoughts on how Foucualt's panopticon theory and Freire's pedagogy merge can be useful in interrogating behaviour, social change and public health messages; public relations for departments of Immigration and Customs, HIV prevention and advocacy for youth for an NGO in Durban; trained research assistants for an ABC Pepfar funded project Johns Hopkins University South Africa (JHESSA). Additionally, she has presented papers at international conferences in the areas of CDA, social semiotics and cultural studies.   

Professional contributions have been on several boards: Vocationa Education Advisory for communication skills and Media Advisory Board (UB). Further, she has been external moderator and examiner for several higher institutes of learning: UB, UKZN and BIUST and lately a member of Skills Share International for commuincation and advocacy. 

She donated books and started a reading corner at GaModubu Trust (an NGO for orphans) as a community outreach measure. 

Health Commuincation 

Business communication

Development Communication

Academic Literacy Skills

Advanced Oral Presentations

Critical Discourse Analysis

Social Semiotics and multimodality

Reception theories and methodologies for cultural and media studies

Designing frameworks for field research on pandemics

Interrogating materials design and production for specific target audiences

Pule, I.M. (1998). Augmenting ESP materials through text analysis: Filling the gaps left by published materials. Guardian of the word. Macmillan: Cape Town. pp 178-188

Segopolo, I.M. & Tomaselli, K.G. (2017). 'I will not share my partner': 'the care of the self' in an HIV prevention campaign, Journal of African Media Studies, 9 (1) 91-111

Segopolo, I.M. (2018).  'Where angels fear to tread fools will!' Who is in control of your sexual health! Adiscursive examination of self-surveillance in an HIV and AIDS prevention campaign. Language and Semiotics Journal, 4, 39-56

Segopolo, I.M. (2018). 'Making them critical learners. ' Employing multi-modality in the health communication classroom: Towards a participatory approch, Lonaka Journal of Learning and Teaching, 9 (2) 30-40