Dr.Victoria de Rjjke joined the University in 1990, gaining her PhD in Metaphor in Literature & the Visual Arts in 2001.
Beginning as a primary school teacher in London, Victoria has worked in Primary Teacher Training for over 30 years, crossing the disciplines of Literacy and Visual & Performing Arts. She has led and collaborated on many projects with schoolchildren and artists, acting as an education/ arts consultant. Victoria is Education's Research Director with CERS Center for Education Research and Scholarship, contributing to supervision and doctoral study.
Victoria is also Co-Chief Editor of the international research journal 'Children's Literature in Education'.
English, Dutch and French
Victoria has published widely across the inter-related fields of Arts Education, Literacy, Children's Literature, Performing Arts and Play, in mixed-mode forms from books and journals to exhibition and digital output.
2020 Reading Children’s Literature.Education 3-13 International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Secondary years Education (49)1:63-78
2020 (Ed) Art & Soul: Rudolf Steiner, Interdisciplinary Art and Education, Springer Press
2019 ‘Love and Revolution in the post-Truth University’. In Gibbs, P. & Jameson, J. (eds)Values in Higher Education (Springer)
2018 War-torn: a juxtaposition of signifiers, or radical collage in children’s literature. Journal of Literary Education (1)
2018 ‘Scribble: postdevelopmental art, or the becoming that breaks out of time’. In Sakr.M & Osgood, J. [eds]. Postdevelopmental Approaches to Art in Early Childhood. Bloomsbury
2017 with Phillips & Sinker, ‘Playing in the dark with online games for girls’ for CIEC Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Special: Dark Play in Digital Playscapes. June 18 (2)
2016 ‘The Values of Savagery: Pathologies of Child and Pet Play in Avant-Garde Visual Culture.’ for Childhood and Pethood: Power, Subjectivity, and the Cultural Politics of Power, Feuerstein, Anna and Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo, (eds) Routledge
2015 de Rijke & Sinker “The Empty Box” Playground, PG4 Tate.
View more publications2018 €20,000 Exchange grant with Santiago University, Chile for research and knowledge exchange in Bio-sociocultural Inclusion: Challenging Homogeneity in Schools . Chile is working with CERS at Middlesex as a leading center in interdisciplinary research in education, developing new theoretical and methodological approaches to (new) inequalities.
Victoria is Director of the arts charity organisation Kahve-Society (Coffee Society) which promotes community arts outreach and enrichment work.
Victoria has many years experience of working with a range of artists, cultural institutions and communities on education arts and literacy projects, including documenting and demonstrating impact in innovative forms such as online.
She has experience with local, national and international radio, TV and digital media following the impact of the Quack Project. She is committed to engaging actively with the arts in education as serious play.
