Biography
A Fulbright alumnus, Melissa Steyn holds the South African National Research Chair in Critical Diversity Studies. She is 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. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is editor or co-editor of five books.
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. She was featured as one of Routledge’s Sociology Super Authors for 2013.
