Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – Prof Sarah Mosoetsa

Prof. Mosoetsa was instrumental in establishing and setting up the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) in 2013 and held the position of CEO at the Institute from 2014. Prof. Mosoetsa holds a Doctorate in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is the author of several publications, including, amongst others, Eating from one pot: dynamics of survival in poor South African households (Wits Press) and co-editor of Labour in the Global South: challenges and alternatives for workers (ILO), and co-editor of Precarious Labor in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press). She has worked for various organisations, including the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP), and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). Prof. Mosoetsa sits on various boards and committees, inter alia, the National Minimum Wage Commission, the University of Venda Council and the Advisory Board for the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. Prof. Mosoetsa is passionate about the humanities and social sciences in South Africa, the continent, and the globe, and their contribution to societies grappling with challenges of poverty and inequalities, economic transformation, and redress.

Deputy CEO (DCEO) for Research – Prof Leickness Simbayi

Professor Simbayi is the Acting Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Research (DCEO:R) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa with effect from 1 June 2023 until 31 March 2024. He previously served as DCEO:R from 1 January 2016 until 31 May 2023, during which time he was also the Interim CEO from 1 April 2021 until 31 January 2023.

He is formerly the founding Executive Director of the HIV/AIDS, STIs and TB (HAST) research programme in the same organisation, a position which he held since its founding in July 2010 until 31 December 2015. He also served as the Executive Director of the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health (SAHA) programme from February 2008 June 2010. Prior to that he served as a Research Director in charge of the Behavioural and Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Unit in SAHA, as well as the Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa of the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance (SAHARA) since November 2001, and also as the Deputy Executive Director of the then SAHA research programme between July 2007 until June 2009.

Professor Simbayi holds a Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) degree in Experimental Psychology from the University of Sussex in England, United Kingdom. He is also currently an Honorary Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town. He is a Member of Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and also a rated researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.

Before joining the HSRC, Professor Simbayi spent 15 years as an academic during which time he taught mainly courses in research methods and statistics in psychology, and biological psychology at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at five different universities in Southern Africa, namely, Universities of Zambia, Bophuthatswana (now North West University, Mahikeng Campus), Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela University, South Campus), Fort Hare, and Western Cape (UWC). He was Associate Professor and Head of Psychology Department at Fort Hare, and Associate Professor and then full Professor as well as Chairperson of the Department of Psychology at UWC.

During the past two decades at the HSRC, Professor Simbayi has mostly conducted his research in the area of social aspects of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In particular, his research has focused on second-generation HIV surveillance especially using biobehavioural surveys, HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), determinants of HIV infection (such as poverty, alcohol and drug use, gender-based violence, sex in the presence of blood, multiple sexual partnerships, and male circumcision), and theory-based HIV social and behavioural risk reduction interventions including positive prevention which targets people living with HIV/AIDS who are aware of their status. Since the onset of COVID-19 in early 2020, he has also been undertaking biobehavioural survey research on national seroprevalence of COVID-19 antibodies.

Prof Simbayi has published over 150 scientific articles in mostly international peer-reviewed academic journals, 26 research reports, 15 abstracts, and 12 book chapters. He also co-edited a book entitled HIV/AIDS in South Africa 25 Years on: Psychosocial Perspectives which was published by Springer of New York in 2009. He has also presented more than 300 papers and posters at both local and international conferences.  

Divisional Executive (DCES) – Prof Narnia Bohler-Muller

Professor Narnia Bohler-Muller is the Divisional Executive in the HSRC’s Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division. She holds a Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the University of Pretoria and specialises in participatory democracy and social justice as well as gender equality and the fulfilment of socioeconomic rights.

Bohler-Muller was formerly a professor at Nelson Mandela University (then known as Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) before she joined the Africa Institute of South Africa in 2011 as a research director. In 2012, she became the deputy executive director of the HSRC’s former Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery research division. Bohler-Muller was an adjunct professor of law, University of Fort Hare (2015-2020) and is currently a research associate with the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies, University of Free State. At the HSRC, she has led numerous large projects for the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Department of Monitoring, Planning and Evaluation in the Presidency, the European Union Commission in South Africa, and the UK Commonwealth and Foreign Office. Bohler-Muller has also led a collaboration with the University of Johannesburg on the COVID-19 democracy survey, with five rounds of the survey conducted from April 2020 to November 2021. Before joining the HSRC, Bohler-Muller spent sixteen years as an academic, during which time she taught numerous courses in law and legal philosophy, beginning her career at the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University. During the past decade, she has mostly conducted research in the area of human rights and social justice within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as gender equality and socio-economic rights.

Bohler-Muller has published 49 scientific articles in local and international peer-reviewed academic journals, 6 books, 15 book chapters and 30 research reports. She has also presented more than 100 papers at local and international conferences, many of them as an invited keynote speaker. She is on the editorial board of one national and two international accredited journals, regularly conducts peer reviews for journals and writes book reviews. She is often called upon to assist with the National Research Foundation’s researcher ratings. Bohler-Muller has officially represented South Africa at international forums, including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa economies), IBSA (India Brazil and South Africa dialogue), the W20 (Women20) and IORA (the Indian Ocean Rim Association). She has completed visiting research fellowships at Birkbeck University (London), Griffith University (Brisbane) and the BRICS Research Centre (Rio de Janeiro).

Divisional Executive (PHSB) – Prof Khangelani Zuma

Professor Khangelani Zuma is the Divisional Executive in the Public Health, Societies and Belonging (PHSB) research division and head of biostatistics at the Human Sciences Research Council based in Pretoria. Zuma has over 12 years of experience as a statistician. He has been involved in large scale surveys and clinical trials as a statistician focusing on conceptualisation, design and implementation of these studies.

His expertise and research interest span survey design, complex data analyses, linear and non-linear mixed models, hierarchical Bayesian models, (correlated) survival data analyses, epidemiology: modelling infectious diseases data, HIV incidence estimation and monitoring and evaluation of HIV intervention programmes.

Zuma has also taught statistics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His recent publications include authoring and co-authoring papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, migration and biostatistics. He has presented papers at both local and international conferences. He is currently the chair of the ministerial Health Data Advisory and Co-ordinating Committee and a member of the Statistics Council of Statistics South Africa.

Zuma is an Honorary Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Wits University School of Public Health.

Divisional Executive (EEE) – Prof Sharlene Swartz

Professor Sharlene Swartz is the Divisional Executive in the Equitable Education and Economies (EEE) research division. She has been with the HSRC since 2008 and has held positions as the Executive Director in the Education and Skills Development programme and as a Research Director in the then Human and Social Development unit. A sociologist by training, she has been an adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town (2012-2019) and is currently an adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa (2019 to date).

Her research focuses on what she has termed ‘navigational capacities’ for the just inclusion of youth in societies in the Global South. She researches and writes extensively on transformative education, reimagined inclusive economic development, and decolonising and emancipatory practices in research. Swartz holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University, US, and undergraduate degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Life Sciences) and the University of Zululand (Philosophy), both in South Africa. Her doctoral thesis, in the sociology of education, considered how young people who live in poverty, understand, represent and enact morality.

Swartz is the Principal Investigator of a longitudinal research study The Imprint of Education, funded by the Mastercard Foundation, that investigates the ways in which higher education impacts the lives of first generation students, and how they in turn affect their worlds. Previous studies included young fathers, race and education, the role of education on alleviating poverty, and peer education. Before embarking on her graduate studies, she spent 12 years at a youth NGO where she pioneered peer-led social justice and life skills education programmes. Swartz has authored six books, edited a further five, has completed nearly seventy journal articles and book chapters, produced fourteen research reports, an ethnographic documentary and presented more than one hundred and twenty local and international invited lectures and conference papers, including a number of keynote addresses.

Authored books include Studying while black: Race, education and emancipation in South African universities (2018, HSRC Press with Mahali, Moletsane et al); Moral eyes: Youth and justice in Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa (2018, HSRC Press with Nyamnjoh et al); Another country: Everyday social restitution (2016, Best Red); Old enough to know: Consulting children about sex and AIDS education in Africa (2012, HSRC Press with McLaughlin et al); Ikasi: The moral ecology of South Africa?s township youth (2009, Palgrave Macmillan; 2010, Wits University Press); and Teenage tata: Voices of young fathers in South Africa (2009, HSRC Press with Bhana). Edited books include The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies (2020, Oxford University Press with Cooper, Batan and Kropff Causa); A history of the human sciences research council of South Africa (2020, HSRC Press with Soudien and Houston); Youth and the intergenerational transmission of poverty (2015, UCT Children’s Institute edited with DeLannoy et al); Youth citizenship and the politics of belonging (2013, Routledge with Arnot); and Moral education in sub-Saharan Africa: culture, economics, conflict and AIDS (2011, Routledge with Taylor).

Swartz is currently President (2018-2022) and an executive member of the International Sociological Association’s Sociology of Youth Research Committee, a past executive member of the Association for Moral Education, and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Moral Education, Journal of Youth Studies, Youth and Globalisation and Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali. She has been involved in multiple civil society organisations, focusing on youth and justice, and has held positions on committees of the National Research Foundation, and has been a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Education and Centre for Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, and at the Centre for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. She is a nationally rated researcher in South Africa.