Annel Pieterse is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama at Stellenbosch University, where she teaches and supervises in South African theatre, film and media studies. She also teaches in the Department of English. In August 2026 she was appointed co-project leader and co-editor of open access digital publication The Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance (ESAT).

She was trained as a literary scholar, completing her MA and PhD in English Studies at Stellenbosch, and her work has since moved between literary studies, performance and screen media. That crossing shapes her research, which reads South African texts across print, stage, film and audio rather than within a single medium.

She held a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of the Western Cape and a research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies' African Humanities Program.

Her work appears in English in Africa, Scrutiny2, Current Writing, South African Theatre Journal and Safundi, and in South African Writing in Transition (Bloomsbury, 2019). She serves on the editorial board of Safundi, having previously been its associate reviews editor, and has edited or co-edited three volumes, including two anthologies of South African poetry in translation. Alongside her academic work she consults, writes and casts for South African screen productions.