Manager: Transformation of the Professoriate Mentoring Programme

Dr Henriëtte van den Berg was appointed as Manager of the Transformation of the Professoriate Mentoring Programme in July 2019. She is a research capacity development and supervisor training specialist working at various South African institutions (including CUT, DUT, Fort Hare, UFS, UL, Rhodes, UNISA, VUT), providing training in topics such as research methodology, ethics review processes, effective research supervision, and mentoring of emerging researchers and academic staff. She started her academic journey at the North-West University in South Africa, completing a bachelors, honours, and master’s degree in Counselling Psychology, registering as a counselling psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa in 1986. For the next ten years, she worked as a psychologist at university counselling centres. After completing her PhD in Psychology at the University of the Free State in 2001, she joined the Department of Psychology as lecturer. During her tenure in the Department of Psychology, she became Programme Director of the Professional Psychology Programme as well as the PhD Child Psychology Programme. She also received recognition for her own research and for the supervision of doctoral students (21PhD and 41 master’s students). In 2013, she was appointed as Director of the Postgraduate School at the University of the Free State, providing strategic leadership for postgraduate policy and process development at the university. In 2017, she embarked on a career as a research and postgraduate education specialist, participating in international and national projects and focusing on building online postgraduate resources (in collaboration with Erasmus University, the Netherlands), strengthening doctoral supervision (National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences – NIHSS), creating enabling postgraduate environments (Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association – SARIMA), and mentoring young academics (Mellon Foundation and the University of the Free State). In 2018, she completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Ethics (cum laude, Stellenbosch University).