Ashley van Niekerk is a professor at the University of South Africa’s (Unisa) Institute for Social and Health Sciences and the Interim Director of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)-Unisa Masculinity and Health Research Unit. Ashley was previously the Deputy Director of the SAMRC-Unisa Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit (2016-2020), a Professor Extraordinarius with the Institute for Social and Health Sciences (2010-2020) and an Adjunct Professor (Research) with Monash University’s Monash Injury Research Institute (2012-2016). He is a member of the Academy of Sciences in South Africa. Ashley has a PhD (Social Medicine, 2007) from the Karolinska Institutet and a M. Psych (Clinical Psychology, 1996) from the University of the Western Cape. His research portfolio is embedded in critical socio-psychological, public health and social justice understandings of the multi-layered nature of injury, its causation, and prevention, with a longstanding focus on burns and child safety. He has been involved in the development of national evidence-based injury and violence prevention policy initiatives, co-leading an Integrated Strategic Framework for the Prevention of Injury and Violence in South Africa (2012-2016), and leading provincial strategies for the prevention of fires (in 2014-2015) and the promotion of water safety (in 2017-2018). Ashley was appointed by the Ministry of Health to its National Health Research Committee (2013-2017), by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention as a technical advisor (2023-current) and was previously on the Burns and Scalds WHO Expert Group for the World Report on Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention for 2007-2009. He is an associate editor of the South African Journal of Psychology (2023-current), an associate editor of Injury Prevention (2018-current), and a former editor-in-chief of African Safety Promotion: A Journal of Injury and Violence Prevention (until 2022, recently renamed Social and Health Sciences).
Ashley van Niekerk
