Emeritus Professors
Professor Gerhard Jordaan
MBChB, PCPsych (PR), MMed (Psych), DMed
Prof Jordaan is a psychiatrist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. His areas of research interest include alcohol-induced psychotic disorder, eating disorders, and psychopharmacology.
Professor Willie Pienaar
MBChB, MMEd (Psych), MPhil (Bio-ethics), DMed
Prof Pienaar is a psychiatrist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. He has a particular interest in bio-ethics in medicine and psychiatry and is one of the foremost addiction psychiatrists in the country.
Professor Robin Emsley
Professors
Professor Oyewusi Gureje
MBBS (Medicine and Surgery), MSc, PhD, and DSc (Psychiatry)
Prof Oye Gureje is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health, Neuroscience, and Substance Abuse, Department of Psychiatry, University of Ibadan. Prof Gureje is internationally recognized as a leading global mental health researcher with important contributions to our understanding of cross-cultural epidemiology of mental disorders, ageing in sub-Saharan Africa, and mental health service development. He is the author of over 400 scholarly papers in scientific journals and book chapters and his research has appeared in high-impact journals in general medicine, ageing, psychiatry, and epidemiology. A recipient of several honours and awards, Prof Gureje was made an Honorary Member of the World Psychiatric Association in 2008. A Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science, he was, in 2008, conferred with Nigeria's highest award for academic achievement, the Nigerian National Order of Merit, by the country's President. Prof Gureje has been involved in several global and national health strengthening, policy development, and global mental health initiatives, and has served as a Consultant/Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization on many global activities since 1991. Since 2006, he has been a member of the WHO International Advisory Group for the Revision of the ICD-10 Chapter on Mental and Behavioural Disorders. As President of the African Association of Psychiatrists and Allied Professionals (2010 – 2014), he convened, in 2009, and in collaboration with the WHO and the WPA, a policy roundtable on scaling up mental health in sub-Saharan Africa. He has worked with the Ministries of Health of Namibia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Liberia to strengthen their mental health services.
Professor Pamela Naidoo
MA, MPH, DPhil
Prof Pamela Naidoo is public health specialist and National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researcher with special interests in non-communicable and communicable diseases. She is a registered Clinical Psychologist and holds a Master's in Public Health, as well as a Doctorate in Philosophy (Behavioural Medicine). Professor Naidoo was appointed as an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University in 2017, and at the University of the Western Cape in 2010. She currently serves as the President of the African Heart Network, and as CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, South Africa. Previously, Professor Naidoo served as Research Director of the Psychosocial Well-Being and Behavioural Interventions sub-programme within the Population Health, Health Systems & Innovation (PHHSI) at the HSRC. She also served as Chief Research Specialist and Head of Section for HIV/TB co-infection at the Human Sciences Research Council in the HIV, AIDS, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Programme (HAST). Professor Naidoo continues to research and publish in the field of behavioural medicine within a NCDs framework. She has a special interest in the relationship between mental health, and its relationship to other risk factors such as tobacco smoking /addiction, and NCDs medical conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and hypertension, and obesity.
Professor Charles D.H. Parry
BSocSc, BSc(Hons), MSc, MA, PhD
Prof Charles Parry is the director of the Alcohol, Tobacco & Other Drug Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council. He is also an extraordinary professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University and is registered with the HPCSA as a Clinical and Research Psychologist. Professor Parry trained in South Africa and the USA in clinical and community psychology and mathematical statistics, and has published over 230 indexed journal articles, and co-authored three books on alcohol policy. His current research centres on alcohol and drug epidemiology, the burden of disease and policy, alcohol use and HIV/TB treatment; and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. He is a member of the editorial/advisory boards of four international journals. Between 2009 and 2016 he served as a member of the Global Science Group, European Commission Research on Addiction in Contemporary European Society initiative. Since 2006 he has been a member of the WHO Expert Panel on Drug Dependence and Alcohol Problems and in 2010 was appointed to the technical advisory group of the UNODC/WHO joint program on drug dependence, treatment, and care and the board of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance. In 2015 he was appointed to UN Office on Drugs & Crime's World Drug Report Scientific Advisory Committee. In 2017 Prof Parry received a MRC Gold Merit Award.
Professor Linda Richter
BA, BAHons, PhD
Prof Richter is a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) – National Research Foundation (NRF) Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford (UK), a Faculty Affiliate of the World Policy Centre at the University of California in Los Angeles, and an advisor to the World Health Organization in Geneva on early child development. Professor Richter has conducted both basic and policy research in the fields of child, youth, and family development as applied to health, education, welfare, and social development. She has published more than 450 papers and book chapters in the fields of child, adolescent and family development, infant and child assessment, protein-energy malnutrition, street and working children, and the effects of HIV and AIDS on children and families. Professor Richter is the recipient of a number of awards, including in 2015 the South African Medical Research Council's Lifetime Achievement Award. She is an A1-rated scientist with the South African National Research Foundation, and she sits on several Boards, including the African Early Child Development Network (AfECN). Professor Richter is the principal investigator of Birth to Twenty Plus, a birth cohort study of children and their families in Soweto, Johannesburg, now in its 28th year. She designed and led the Fatherhood Project, a media and research intervention to promote men's involvement in their families and with their children. Most recently, she led the publication of country profiles for early child development as part of Countdown to 2030.
Professor Sarah Halligan
Professor E. Eugene Hoyme
Professor Eugene Kinyanda
Professor Philip A. May
Associate Professors
Professor Astrid Berg
MBChB, FCPsych(SA), MPhil (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)
Prof Berg is a child psychiatrist, psychiatrist, and fully qualified psychoanalyst, who practiced in the South African public sector. Professor Berg retired in 2015 and is currently an Emerita Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town and Associate Professor Extraordinary in Psychiatry, Stellenbosch University. She is a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), and a founder member of the Southern African Association of Jungian Analysts (SAAJA). Professor Berg initiated the establishment of the Sue Struengmann Chair in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, which represents the first and only such Chair in Sub-Saharan Africa. She also established the University of Cape Town (UCT) Parent-Infant Mental Health Service in 1995 and is a founder of the Western Cape Association for Infant Mental Health which is affiliated with the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH). Professor Berg previously served as the Vice President and Executive Committee Member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (1997-2007) and served two terms as the President of SAAJA (1998-2003). Professor Berg is currently an Executive Committee Member for the World Association for Infant Mental Health, an Advisor to the Struengmann Foundation, and a co-convenor of the MPhil (Infant Mental Health) at Stellenbosch University. She was a recipient of the 2010 International WAIMH Award and a recipient of the RWS Cheetham Award from the College of Psychiatry (SA) for the book she wrote "Connecting with South Africa - cultural communication and understanding".
Professor Piet Oosthuizen
MBCHB, FCPsych (SA), MMed (Psych), PhD
Prof Oosthuizen is a specialist psychiatrist with extensive experience in private practice. He worked as a Senior Consultant Psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University until being awarded the title of Associate Professor in 2003. Professor Oosthuizen served as the Head of Neuropsychiatry at Tygerberg Hospital between 2003 and 2009, after which he returned to private practice. Professor Oosthuizen continues to lecture and conduct research as an Extraordinary Associate Professor at Stellenbosch University. He is an author of over 80 journal publications and has made significant contributions to textbooks in psychiatry. His specific research interests include early psychosis, bipolar disorder, and neuropsychiatry.
Professor Felix Potocnik
MBChB, FCPsych
After obtaining his medical degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1975, Prof. Potocnik went to Natal for five years where he obtained his Diploma in Midwifery in 1978. Having completed stints in four of the "big five" medical specialties he migrated to the Western Cape, where he obtained his psychiatric qualification at the University of Cape Town in 1984. He started his career heading their Psychogeriatric Unit and continued in this position when he came across to the University of Stellenbosch in 1994. He currently heads the Psychogeriatric Unit of Tygerberg and Stikland Hospitals and is Program Manager of the Old Age Psychiatry Portfolio for the Associated Psychiatric Hospitals, Provincial Government Western Cape, and is also a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry.
His research interests have included the treatment of alcohol dependence in the elderly and the effects of metals on cell membranes and the brain. This has translated into studies involving patients with Alzheimer's disease, Vascular Dementia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Ulcerative Colitis as part of interdepartmental research projects. His current projects involve the genetics of frontotemporal dementia and the treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia (hypersexuality and disruptive vocalization) and HIV (cognition). He has published widely, including topics relating to his personal passion and hobby, such as Equine clinical nutrition, predictive factors in successful sport horse breeding, and equine kinetics.
Senior Lecturers
Dr Matthew Mausling
MBChB, FCPsych, MMed (Psych)
Dr Mausling is an Extraordinary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry. His interests include methods of improving long-term prognosis of individuals with serious mental illness.
Lecturers
Mr Willem Odendaal
MA Research Psychology (UWC)
Mr Odendaal has been employed as a senior scientist at the Health Systems Research Unit (http://www.mrc.ac.za/intramural-research-units/HealthSystems) of the South African Medical Research Council since 2009. He is currently the programme manager of the South African Initiative for Systematic Reviews and Rapid Evidence Syntheses on Health Policies and Systems (SAI) (http://www.mrc.ac.za/intramural-research-units/HealthSystems-SAI)which aims to promote the conduct and use of standard systematic reviews as well as rapid evidence syntheses for health policies and systems contexts. Mr. Odendaal contributed to the WHO Guidelines for digital health interventions, and his research interests include community health worker interventions, formative programme evaluations, mobile health interventions, and conducting systematic reviews and rapid evidence syntheses.
Dr Nicola Dawson
Katharine Frost
