Psychology Events

Prof. Kobus Maree (DEd; PhD; DPhil) has been the past editor of several scholarly journals, including the South African Journal of Psychology, and a member of several national and international bodies and editorial boards. Kobus has received multiple awards for his work and has authored or co-authored 110+ peer reviewed articles and 55 books or book chapters on career counselling, research, and related topics, supervised 37 doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations, read keynote papers at 30+ international and 25+ national conferences since 2012. He has also presented numerous invited workshops at conferences worldwide on a) integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in career counselling and b) the art and science of writing scholarly articles. Over the past seven years, he has spent much time abroad (for instance, as a visiting professor at various universities where he presented workshops on contemporary developments in career counselling). He was awarded a fellowship at the IAAP in July 2014. In September 2017, he received PsySSA’s Fellow Award. 

I am an independent consultant and practitioner within the social justice and development arena, a clinical psychologist and African feminist with expertise in the area of trauma, gender and group process. I spent 14 years as an academic before moving into ‘full-time practice’, facilitating group processes on issues of social justice, transformation, diversity, inclusion and healing in community, academic and corporate domains. I have journeyed with NGO leadership both within South Africa and internationally, from community-based organisations to collectives of Human Rights Defenders and climate justice activists, to United Nations agencies. I am deeply invested in exploring and expanding what a decolonised therapy/ collective healing process/ feminist politic and ethic of love and care might look like, particularly for NGOs and in activist and social movement spaces. I am the founder of ‘Deep Wellness’, an initiative and social enterprise invested in unpacking what it means to be truly, fundamentally well as Black womxn and Black people. More and more this has meant engaging racial trauma, interrogating and overcoming those things – outside and inside of ourselves – that diminish us, and as part of a collective healing journey, accessing more deeply, our wells of power and joy.

Over the years, my practice has gravitated towards a focus on individual, collective and organisational change concerning racism, diversity, racial healing, transformation, and social justice. I have been involved in organisation-wide transformation-related interventions in the corporate, public, educational, and not-for-profit sectors. In this context, South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, demands that organisational practitioners find new, non-formulaic, and context-specific solutions for greater social justice.

This has spurned my search for and commitment to relevant and innovative theory-driven praxis for social justice in organisations. In keeping with this, my academic pursuits have been directed at interrogating the psychosocial impact of “race”, gender, class, marginalisation and non-belonging on collectives. At the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, I had the opportunity to integrate practice and theory to address transformation-related issues and developed a three and a five-day accredited short course titled “Race, diversity, social justice and transformation in organisations”.

I am currently pursuing a PhD which explores senior professionals’ experiences of mediating the psychosocial impact of past and on-going racialisation. Recently I revived my organisational psychology practice, Soul@Work, that focuses on racial healing and trauma.