Edgard Sienaert

Joan with a group of MA/PhD students in the Orality-Literacy Studies Programme
of which Joan was the lode star.

Joan with Edgard Sienaert at his retirement in 2000

The two words that come to mind when thinking of Joan are an unusual, rare, even, combination: energetic and caring. One easily finds energetic people, and, perhaps slightly less easily, caring people, but someone who has drive and carries others along, irresistibly – and sometimes unwillingly at first – and who at the same time nurtures and, in many cases, as her former and present students will testify, heals, is indeed rare. And this, one might say, often against all odds: institutions have a singular capacity not to recognize the richness within them - a simple variation on the theme: ‘No-one is a prophet ...’

Joan is an exceptional scholar, with outstanding MA and PhD degrees, readable in-depth articles and a series of publications on the French linguistic and social anthropologist (this year 2011 is the fiftieth anniversary of his death, a date not going unmarked in France).  With the latter publications she has greatly contributed to make known in the English speaking world an original thinker who has, and who will continue doing so increasingly, does more than any other scholar to bridge the orality-literacy gap.  It is in this latter endeavour especially that Joan’s teaching and research is bound to leave a long-lasting legacy.

I, personally, most certainly wish to thank Joan most sincerely for some fifteen years of a most fruitful and enjoyable collaboration.

But the notion of Joan retiring, that is an unfathomable fantasy.