Prof. Liesel Ebersöhn is Director of the Centre for the Study of Resilience and Full Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria. She is a National Research Foundation-rated researcher, and registered educational psychologist. Her research is positioned in contexts characteristic of an emerging-economy country in transformation. She combines emancipatory and intervention methodologies to investigate pathways to resilience as human-ecological and cultural adaptive responses to chronic and cumulative adversity. Her recognised scientific contributions include a generative theory (relationship-resourced resilience) describing an emic system to counter chronic adversity, as well as ‘flocking’ – a term she coined to depict a collectivist indigenous psychology pathway to resilience. Her research focus has had a decided impact on curricula for teacher training in several higher education institutions in South Africa.
Prof. Ebersöhn was a Co-Chair of the Poverty and Education Task Force and currently serves as Secretary General of the World Education Research Association, Executive Editor of the South African Journal of Education, and the Chair of the Ethics Committee (Faculty of Education). She also serves as Chair of the International Research and Scholarship Committee (Division C, Learning and Instruction) of the American Educational Research Association.
