26th Congress: Invited Panel: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”: Building Solidarities with Psychology’s Next Generation

Floretta Boonzaier is the President-Elect of the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA), Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, and co-Director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa. She is noted for her work in feminist, critical and postcolonial psychologies, research on subjectivity in relation to race, gender and sexuality, work on gendered and sexual violence, and decolonial research methodologies. She was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychology in Society (PINS) from 2018 to 2021. She is a past UCT Mandela Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and a past recipient of the runner up award in the South African Department of Science and Technology’s Women in Science awards, for the category of Distinguished Young Woman Researcher in the Social Sciences or Humanities. She serves on the Board of Mosaic Training, Service and Healing Centre for Women, in Cape Town and the African Gender Institute and Huma Institute at the University of Cape Town. She has also served as an Executive Committee Member of the Sexuality and Gender Division of PsySSA. Her recent publications include the co-edited volumes Engaging youth in activism, research and pedagogical praxis. Transnational and intersectional perspectives on gender, sex and race (Routledge, 2018), Decolonial Feminist Community Psychology (Springer, 2019), Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence (Routledge, 2020) and the co-authored book, Pan-Africanism and Psychology in Decolonial Times (Palgrave Macmillan, in press).

Haile Matutu is a queer doctoral candidate at the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa, University of Cape Town. His work on intimate partner violence among queer men aims at developing non-oppressive practices of doing psychological research with marginalized populations in South Africa. Matutu is invested in exploring how non-normative sexualities and gendered subjectivity and their interaction with violence among queer people might be theorized from an emic perspective. His interests are largely in decolonizing feminist methodologies, the constructions of identities and subjectivities, particularly how sex, race, culture, and place intersect with and influence psychological phenomena among people on the African continent. He aims to develop a body of work centred on African ethics in the field of psychological research with marginalised populations in the Global South. He aspires to be a feminist.

Bridgette is a Student Registered Counsellor completing her practicum at the Department of Correctional Services (Kroonstad) and Fezile Dabi District Department of Education. Bridgette is the current PsySSA Student Division Chairperson and is an established social activist with extensive work with Soul City as a Social Mobiliser. She has leadership experience in various student organisations such as Golden Key UFS Chapter and TEDxUFS.

Tumi Jonas Mpofu was born and bred in eKapa, grappling from an early age with issues of social justice. Motivated to understand and challenge herself and those around her, she has over the past 15 years been involved in social justice work across Africa. She is involved in various spaces where she labours in thought and practice on building just caring futures for the oppressed.