Professor Liesel Ebersöhn

Professor Ebersöhn is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR) and a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education. As an NRF-rated researcher, Professor Ebersöhn is regarded as a leading scholar and teacher in resilience and resilience promoting interventions in high-risk school settings. Her research is positioned in contexts characteristic of an emerging economy country in transformation. She combines emancipatory and intervention methodologies to investigate pathways to resilience as human-ecological and cultural adaptive responses to chronic and cumulative adversity. Her recognised scientific contributions include a generative theory (relationship-resourced resilience) describing an emic system to counter chronic adversity, as well as ‘flocking’, a word she coined to depict a collectivist indigenous psychology pathway to resilience.

Professor Ebersöhn is the appointed Secretary-General of the World Education Research Association (WERA). She serves as Chair of the International Research and Scholarship Committee (Division C, Learning and Instruction, of the American Educational Research Association), and was the South African international representative to the Building Resilience in Teacher Education (BRITE) Project Reference Group , Murdoch University.

She presented a plenary session in March 2016 as an invited speaker to the Global Development Network 17th Annual Conference in Lima and at a symposium on Indigenous Pathways to Resilience at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychological Association. She was visiting professor at Yale University and Edith Cowan University. Her research focus has had a decided impact on curricula for teacher training in several higher education institutions in South Africa. With students, co-researchers and as single author, Prof Ebersöhn has contributed more than 70 peer-reviewed articles, numerous book chapters and several edited and co-authored books.

Her teaching and research outputs attest that higher education can effectively integrate research, teaching and learning as well as community engagement. Her pedagogy aligns with global citizenship and education as key strategies to restructure postcolonial conditions.
 

Professor Linda Theron

Professor Linda Theron, D. Ed., is an HPCSA-registered Educational Psychologist and professor at the Centre for the Study of Resilience. She is also a full professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa and extraordinary professor in Optentia Research Unit, North-West University, South Africa. Her clinical and research interest is in child and adolescent resilience, with a special interest in how situational and cultural context shapes the resilience of African young people. Linda has authored/co-authored 140+ peer-reviewed academic publications relating to child and youth resilience. She serves as an (action) associate editor of two respected peer-reviewed journals: Child Abuse & Neglect (Elsevier) and Journal of Adolescent Research (Sage). The National Research Foundation of South Africa rated Linda’s resilience-focused work as internationally acclaimed and she is an elected member of the Academy of Science, South Africa (ASSAf).

 

Dr Nombuso Gama

Dr Nombuso Gama is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pretoria (UP). She joined the Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR) team in January 2024, as a member of the 2REST Project. 2REST is an acronym for Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities. This multi-country project traces the resilience of street youth from Harare (Zimbabwe), Bukavu (Republic of Congo) and Accra (Ghana). As a result, she is currently coding ethnographic reports that follow the everyday lives of street youth. She follows as they navigate their struggles, their successes and experiences their ingenuity in the face their under sourced environments. This is an experience that she finds humbling, sometimes emotional but also a privilege to be part of.  

Dr. Nombuso is not a stranger to Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR). She holds a resilience focused PhD from the University of Pretoria. Her now Post-Doctoral mentor, Professor Theron, also served as her PhD supervisor. Her PhD investigated the resilience of young adults inhabiting stressed industrialised environment in Eswatini. Her PhD was part of the RYSE project, a project that Professor Theron was a lead investigator in the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) project investigated the resilience of Canadian and South African youth within gas and petrochemical industries.   

 

Ds. Rue Hopley

As the Research and Centre Administrator at the Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR), Rue’s role is to ensure the effective management of both research projects and the Centre’s daily operations. Rue oversees various aspects of the research process, from managing project timelines to assets, ensuring that resources are used efficiently. Rue works closely with researchers, facilitates communication among different role players, and provides essential administrative support to keep projects running smoothly. Her responsibilities include organising research data, maintaining databases, and assisting with the preparation of reports, proposals, and publications, all while ensuring compliance with institutional and ethical standards to uphold the integrity of our research. In addition, Rue manages the Centre’s administrative functions, organises events, workshops, and conferences, and oversees facility operations, all of which contribute to the overall advancement and promotion of resilience studies. Rue’s efforts support the Centre’s mission to expand knowledge in resilience, allowing researchers to focus on their work while I handle the crucial logistical, administrative, and operational tasks. Rue holds a B.Th and an MDiv. from the University of Pretoria (UP) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Practical Theology at UP. Her research focuses on the potential of intentional play for children’s ministry, drawing on data from a previous research study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Resilience during 2021-2024 called the Masidlale Study.
 

Mrs Jamie Spies

As a Lecturer and Methodology of Education Research Module Coordinator at the University of Pretoria, Jamie serves as a Senior Research Assistant at the Centre for the Study of Resilience (CSR) and the Faculty of Engineering (Joint Community Projects). Jamie plays a pivotal role in an interdisciplinary engineering education project led by Professor Lelanie Smith in collaboration with  Professor Liesel Ebersöhn. This study is poised to contribute innovative insights into change as a resilience resource within the field of Engineering Education. In their PhD research, Jamie focuses on studying the practical wisdom of teachers, aiming to explore the nuanced ways in which teachers cultivate wise, adaptive, and contextually grounded practices to engage learners effectively. Jamie’s previous Master’s research on teacher well-being during the pandemic contributed critical findings to the field, highlighting resilience as an essential factor in teacher support and professional sustainability amid crises.