Sandy Lazarus Author

Sandy Lazarus is currently an independent contractor (senior specialist scientist) at the South African Medical Research Council/University of South Africa’s Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit in Cape Town, as well as a professor at the University of the Western Cape, and an extraordinaire professor at the University of South Africa. Her professional experience and expertise lies in the area of community psychology, expressed primarily in the education and health sectors. She has worked primarily as an academic activist, researcher and teacher (with her professional registration as a research psychologist providing her primary scope), contributing to local, provincial, national and international contexts over approximately four decades of professional practice. These contributions have included national policy development and practice in education, with a particular focus on the development of an inclusive education system and education support services in South Africa; national policy development and practice in health promotion, and more specifically in the development of health promoting schools; research methodology, with a particular focus on the development of community engaged research through participatory action research approaches; and, more recently (over the last ten years), her work has focused on violence, violence prevention, and safety and peace promotion in South Africa.