Meet the Finalists in Human and Social Sciences – Distinguished Woman Researcher Category at the South African Women in Science Awards 2025

As South Africa celebrates Women’s Month, the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) proudly unveils the finalists of the South African Women in Science Awards (SAWISA) 2025. These exceptional women exemplify excellence, leadership, and transformative impact in research and innovation. Today, we spotlight the finalists in the Distinguished Woman Researcher category in the Human and Social Sciences.

Prof. Shanaaz Mathews is a Professor of Public Health and former director of the Children's Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Prof. Mathews' career has been dedicated to the prevention of violence against women and children, recognising these intersecting issues as both a global public health concern and a major developmental challenge.

Her recent research focuses on identifying and scaling effective strategies to prevent such violence, with a particular emphasis on addressing the complexity of these so-called "wicked" problems. She serves as the evaluation lead for the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls global programme. This initiative supports the evaluation of interventions across Africa and Asia, combining rigorous methodologies from randomised controlled trials with implementation science in order to generate robust evidence on "what works" to prevent violence at scale and to better understand the pathways to sustainable change.

Prof. Mathews is also deeply committed to research partnerships with institutions in the Global South, aimed at strengthening the capacity of local researchers to conduct ethical and methodologically sound violence-prevention research. She is a co-investigator on a recently awarded UK National Institute for Health and Care Research grant, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham. This project seeks to develop and adapt best practices to prevent violence against women and violence against children in low-resource settings, using South Africa as an anchor for testing innovations across contexts such as Mexico, Brazil, India and Sri Lanka.

A founding member of the Coalition for Good Schools, which is a Global South network of academics and practitioners, Prof. Mathews champions the use of schools as scalable platforms to promote effective, locally grounded violence-prevention interventions.

Prof. Mathews holds a C1 rating from the NRF (2018), with a new rating currently pending. She has authored nearly 100 scholarly works, including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, policy briefs and technical reports. Her research has earned her an h-index of 21 on Scopus and 34 on Google Scholar, with over 5 000 citations. In 2024, she delivered the keynote address at the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Conference in Sweden. She was honoured with the 2022 Alan Pifer Award, which is one of UCT's highest accolades for socially responsive research.

She has successfully graduated seven students (two PhDs and five master's) and currently supervises three PhD and two master's students.

A specialist in public health, Prof. Mathews was recently appointed Chair of the Scientific Committee for the World Health Organization's (WHO) 16th World Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion Conference, to be held in 2026. She also serves as a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Gender-based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People, and sits on several advisory boards, including the International Panel on Social Progress and the Global Women's Institute at George Washington University. She is a member of the editorial boards of Child Abuse Review and Child Protection and Practice and serves as an Editor of the forthcoming South African Child Gauge 2025, which will focus on intersections of violence against women and girls.

The South African Women in Science Awards celebrate the outstanding contributions of women researchers across disciplines, inspiring future generations and advancing equity in science, technology, and innovation.

Stay tuned as we continue to profile the 2025 finalists during Women’s Month.