Welcome to the NRf Chair

Kebogile Mokwena is a Research Professor at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in Pretoria, South Africa. She obtained her doctorate in Public Health Education from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, USA, in 1998 and has been in the leadership of the Public Health academic program at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (previously MEDUNSA) since that time. She has held various leadership positions including Acting Dean, Director, and HOD at the University. Her current research niche area is substance abuse and population mental health. She is the most published researcher on nyaope, a novel psychoactive substance that has wreaked havoc on especially low socio-economic communities in South Africa.

She holds the National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Chair in Substance abuse and Population Mental Health grant, which is a national honor for prestigious and outstanding academic research. This grant was awarded as an acknowledgment of her work on nyaope, which she continues to expand. This grant enables multi-disciplinary substance abuse and mental health research across universities and science councils in South Africa. She has won several teaching and research awards in academia and has supervised an estimated 96 postgraduate research students on several aspects of health promotion, substance abuse, and mental health. She is an active researcher and has published extensively in academic journals both locally and internationally, she has also presented her work in academic conferences both nationally and internationally and is a reviewer for several local and international journals. She also serves as an external examiner for postgraduate students at several universities in South Africa.