University of Cape Town, Department of Psychology, South Africa
Catherine L. Ward is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina, USA. Her research interests are in violence prevention from the perspective of children’s development, and particularly in public health approaches to this – in developing evidence-based approaches to violence prevention that have a wide reach and are effective in improving children’s development and reducing their likelihood of becoming aggressive. Much of her current work is focused on preventing child maltreatment, and on understanding the epidemiology of risk factors faced by South African children.
Catherine Ward co-leads the VPA Parenting Project Group with Chris Mikton from WHO and Theresa Kilbane from UNICEF. Recently, she and her colleagues Amelia van der Merwe and Andrew Dawes produced the edited volume Youth violence: Sources and solutions in South Africa. The book reviews the current state of the science in understanding how to prevent children from becoming aggressive, and how to adapt the evidence-base for use in low- and middle-income countries.
In addition, she serves on the Advisory Boards of the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, and the Capoeira Educational Youth Association (a youth development association in Cape Town); and on the Editorial Boards of the journals South African Crime Quarterly and Psychosocial Interventions.