Alison is an accomplished artist and scholar of South African art, with a multi-disciplinary research focus on exploring epistemologies of art. She holds a prestigious rating with the South African National Research Council. Alison obtained her PhD, titled Beyond the Readymade: Found Objects in Contemporary South African art in 2016. She completed her Master’s degree in Visual Art from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2004 with distinction. Her praxis includes making artworks that critically engage with the discourses and institutions of art, and analyzing modernist and contemporary African artworks that challenge inherited, western discourses of art. These interests inform her approaches to teaching and the educational work that she does with diverse audiences in the art museum. She was awarded an Ampersand Fellowship in 2018 for recognition of her work in museum education in 2018.

Since 2022 Alison is an Associate Professor in Art History and Theory in the Division of Visual Arts, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. Before taking up her professorship, she taught visual art, art history and art education at University level for over 16 years. Her work in higher education includes facilitating numerous workshops on creative pathways to academic writing, and learning in and with art. She is past president of the South African Visual Art Historians Association (SAVAH) and has served on academic journal editorial boards. She has co-guest edited two journal special editions focusing on materiality and African art among other publications. As part of her leadership role at SAVAH, Alison co-organized inter-disciplinary, international conferences at diverse Higher Education Institutions, fundraised to pay for emerging academics’ participation in the conferences and facilitated several academic practices and mentorship workshops. 

Alison has participated in numerous group exhibitions in South Africa, America, Switzerland and Australia. Among her artistic achievements, are that Alison was a finalist in the 2003 MTN New contemporaries Award and has participated in artist’s residencies in Basel and Melbourne. She has published scholarly work on contemporary South African art and developed education materials for engaging with art for Wits Art Museum and the Constitutional Court of South Africa Trust.