Prof Ashraf Kagee, a health psychologist and lecturer in research methodology in the Department of Psychology, recently delivered his inaugural lecture. The title of his lecture was Epistemology, Social Relevance and Health Psychology Research. Prof Kagee focuses on stress and trauma, treatment adherence in primary care, and the behavioural aspects of HIV and AIDS.

Prof Kagee was born in Cape Town and spent his undergraduate years at the University of Cape Town, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Political Studies and a Higher Diploma in Education. He was awarded the Christine Reis Scholarship to study at the University of Portland in Oregon, USA, and completed a Master of Arts degree in Psychology in 1991. After returning to South Africa in 1993 he registered as a psychologist with the South African Medical and Dental Council. Between 1993 and 1995 he worked as a programme officer at the Centre for Student Counselling and as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Western Cape. He returned to the USA for doctoral studies and completed a PhD in Counselling Psychology at Ball State University in Indiana in 1999. He then began a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, which he completed in 2001. He was awarded a research fellowship by the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Violence at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, and spent that year as a researcher at Stellenbosch University. Prof Kagee joined the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University as Associate Professor in 2003 and was promoted to Professor in 2004. He also completed a Master of Public Health degree at the University of Cape Town in 2005.
Read Professor Kagee’s Inaugural Lecture here .