Derilene (Dee) Marco is a creative scholar who holds a Senior Lecturer position in Media Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dee’s research pivots around social and cultural practices and experiences of the everyday, particularly in relation to mothering identities, person-making and caregiving as labour/ work. She has written on apartheid and post-apartheid South African cinema, black women’s lives and stories and is the co-editor of Sasinda Futhi Siselapha (still Here): Black Feminist Approaches to Cultural Studies in South Africa's Twenty Six Years Since 1994 (2021) and Transforming Pedagogy, a workbook for parents (2023). Dee is the founder of the multimodal research project, Mother.Lab, which houses a mobile Complaints space for mothers and caregivers, called House of Complaints and which hosts various freeing experiences for mothers and caregivers in a contemporary world.

Mother.Lab is a virtual and physical creative arts and research space started by Dee Marco in 2021. In it, she uses her own experiences of mothering to think with other mothers. She also draws on experiences in her own family to think with other families. Mother.Lab is the first platform of its kind in the global South. Mother.Lab produces and engages research about mothers and parents, offers a curriculum and shares critical parent material through parents groups. Mother.Lab is also a curated space that plays with the ongoing question of what it means and looks like to mother. To mother is a verb, an active sensibility and one which is continuously changing. Mother.Lab thus uses multiple themes and offerings, including: The House of Complaints and a collection of teeth from around the world, titled Generation Alpha. It offers a consultancy service to help with all things mothering: from choosing schools and extra murals to helping mothers and caregivers create their own work and order. Mother.Lab helps mothers to see themselves and seeks to build community among mothers.

www.motherlab.me