Joanna has been based in the Centre for International Development at Northumbria since March 2019. Her research focuses on resistance to neocolonial natural resource exploitation, histories of women's anti-colonial resistance movements, Saharawi and Equatoguinean (resistance) literatures, environmental justice, and the relationship between energy and culture. In 2022, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize (languages and literature category) for her work. 

Joanna currently holds an AHRC Fellowship for a project investigating the relationship between poetry and diplomacy in the Saharawi context. Among other activities, she will be producing a bilingual anthology of Saharawi poetry and a Special Collection of poetry and life history recordings for the British Library's Sound Archive. 

Joanna's second book Saharan Winds is under contract with University of West Virginia Press. It focuses on wind imaginaries and how they shape the development of, and politics mediated by, energy systems in Western Sahara. Joanna's first book Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 African Studies Association Fage and Oliver prize for best book on Africa and was runner up in the 2020 International Studies Association’s biennial Feminist Theory and Gender Studies book prize. It offers histories of women's resistance to colonialism, occupation and dictatorships in Spain's colonies in Africa during and since the Spanish colonial period.  

Before beginning her PhD, Joanna worked at National Energy Action, the UK Consortium on HIV/AIDS and International Development, London Councils European Service and War on Want. She has been part of the Saharawi solidarity movement for years, including as President of Western Sahara Resource Watch until 2017. 

Joanna has been based in the Centre for International Development at Northumbria since March 2019. Her research focuses on resistance to neocolonial natural resource exploitation, histories of women's anti-colonial resistance movements, Saharawi and Equatoguinean (resistance) literatures, environmental justice, and the relationship between energy and culture. In 2022, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize (languages and literature category) for her work. 

Joanna currently holds an AHRC Fellowship for a project investigating the relationship between poetry and diplomacy in the Saharawi context. Among other activities, she will be producing a bilingual anthology of Saharawi poetry and a Special Collection of poetry and life history recordings for the British Library's Sound Archive. 

Joanna's second book Saharan Winds is under contract with University of West Virginia Press. It focuses on wind imaginaries and how they shape the development of, and politics mediated by, energy systems in Western Sahara. Joanna's first book Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships, and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 African Studies Association Fage and Oliver prize for best book on Africa and was runner up in the 2020 International Studies Association’s biennial Feminist Theory and Gender Studies book prize. It offers histories of women's resistance to colonialism, occupation and dictatorships in Spain's colonies in Africa during and since the Spanish colonial period.

Before beginning her PhD, Joanna worked at National Energy Action, the UK Consortium on HIV/AIDS and International Development, London Councils European Service and War on Want. She has been part of the Saharawi solidarity movement for years, including as President of Western Sahara Resource Watch until 2017.