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Professor Melissa Steyn  Professor Melissa Steyn holds the South African National Research Chair in Critical Diversity Studies.

A Fulbright alumnus, Melissa Steyn holds the SARChI Chair in Critical Diversity Studies. She has been developing Diversity Studies as a field in Higher Education, first at the University of Cape Town and more recently as the founding director of the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Her work engages with intersecting hegemonic social formations, but she is best known for her publications on whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa. Her book, Whiteness just isn’t what is used to be: White identity in a changing South Africa (2001, SUNY Press,) won the 2002 Outstanding Scholarship Award in International and Intercultural Communication from the National Communication Association in the United States. She was featured as one of Routledge’s Sociology Super Authors for 2013.

Her co-edited books include The Prize and the Price: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa (Vol 2) (2009, HSRC), Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa (Vol 1) (2005, Kwela), Under construction: Race and identity in South Africa Today  (2004, Heinemann) and Cultural Synergy in South Africa: Weaving Strands of Africa and Europe (1996, Knowledge Resources).

Melissa is a recipient of the University of Cape Town’s Distinguished Teacher’s Award (2009), and the South African Council for Higher Education National Excellence in Teaching Award (2010). She holds a University of Southampton Diamond Jubilee International Fellowship.