A UCT public health professor, Shanaaz Mathews is the evaluation lead for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s global What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls programme. She serves on The Lancet Commission on Gender-based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People.
Mathews also chairs the Scientific Committee for the WHO’s 2026 World Injury Prevention Conference and is an editor of the South African Child Gauge 2025. She is an award-winning NRF rated researcher.
Mathews says: “When South Africa was transitioning into a new era of democracy in 1994, I worked on a project establishing a network on violence against women with a focus on influencing the formulation of the Domestic Violence Act of 1998. I conducted research into the budget allocation for the Act and was invited to present the research findings at the United Nations Women’s Conference in 2000 in New York. This experience made me understand the power that rigorous research has to influence policy, with the potential to change the lives of women and children in communities.
“Through my research, I focus on issues that surface the major challenges women and children face to achieve their rights enshrined in the Constitution to be free from violence in their home and community.”
