Floretta Boonzaier

Floretta Avril Boonzaier is a South African psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. She is noted for her work in feminist, critical and postcolonial psychologies, subjectivity in relation to race, gender and sexuality, and gender-based violence, and qualitative psychologies, especially narrative, discursive and participatory methods.

Quotes

• I especially enjoy doing research that provides the opportunity for collaboration. Research and writing can be a lonely endeavour, so the opportunity to engage with others in your field can be hugely enriching and my experience suggests that it advances innovative, creative and novel scholarship. I especially enjoy opening collaborative spaces through supervision of master’s and doctoral students and have often learned more from the students I supervise rather than the other way around.
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• Ending men’s violence toward women is a key concern, not only for women’s well-being, but for the well-being of society as a whole. South Africa is notorious for its excessively high levels of gendered violence. My work has made practical recommendations for ending men’s violence and contributing to gender equity that have been taken up by a number of organisations.
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• My research allows me to work against representations on violence and marginalised people, representations that include me, as a black woman from a working-class background.
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• Pursue research interests that drive and sustain your passions – but also look around you and consider the contexts in which you work and what your work might be doing at the level of ethics, politics and representation.
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• It is important to think critically and to reflect on the ethical and political impact of your research – regardless of the ‘kind’ of psychology you end up doing. The contexts in which we work as researchers and psychologists – that involve deepening global and local inequalities, growing legitimised and institutionalised forms of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and increasing poverty and dispossession – demand that we think carefully about how or whether our work advances social justice.
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