Presmeg is originally from South Africa, was educated in South Africa and England, and worked in the US, where she is professor emeritus of mathematics at Illinois State University.
[2] She taught high school mathematics in South Africa from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, and earned a master's degree in education in 1980 at the University of Natal.
Her dissertation, The Role of Visually Mediated Processes in High School Mathematics: A Classroom Investigation, was supervised by Alan J. Bishop [de].
[4] After returning to South Africa for a five-year stint at the University of Durban-Westville, she moved to the US in 1990, as a faculty member in Curriculum and Instruction at Florida State University.
Ten years later, she moved to Illinois State University,[2] where she is retired as a professor emeritus.