Welcome

Welcome to my digital teaching and research portfolio. On this e-portfolio you will be able to learn more about my philosophies, practices, and perspectives...and a few personal stories from the classroom and the field.

The purpose of a teaching portfolio is critically reflect on and demonstrate competence, experience, and excellence in learning, teaching, assessment, research, and community engagement.

My journey in higher education

I started my lecturing career while a postgraduate student at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in 2006 and have lectured several courses in research methods, health, psychology, statistics, data analysis, knowledge translation, and systematic reviews since. I have been lecturing for a total of 18 years both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, with classes ranging from 5 students to 350 students, within multiple disciplines. As you will learn in my teaching philosophy, I take a friendly approach to teaching, believing that my students are equals who have yet to gain the knowledge I can impart to them and that they have valuable insights that I can learn from. I find this approach helps to break traditional “them” and “us” type barriers between students and their facilitators. Innovation in learning and teaching is something I value, and I make conscious efforts to integrate innovative, relevant, and student-centred approaches into the classroom. I enjoy engaging lectures with discussions, polls, and peer to peer learning. In this regard, I have presented some of my innovation in the classroom at the SOTL conference in 2018 and 2019, as well as published, with colleagues at CEBHC, on how we developed engaging short courses. My strengths as a teacher come into action both in and outside of the classroom and working with students through mentoring and supervision, as well as the conduct of research on pedagogies and innovation in research methods.

Mission

I have been in the employment of the Department of Global Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, SU, since 2015 and have been a part of the renewing of our vision of being ‘the leading research-intensive health sciences faculty in and for Africa’. I believe in our mission 

“We lead by facilitating transformative, life-long learning; creating, sharing and translating knowledge that enhances health and health equity; and co-creating value with and for the communities we serve”. 

This is strongly aligned with The vision of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) is to promote health and equality in South Africa and beyond.

The Faculty's mission is:​

• to create and maintain a culture of transformative learning;

• to contribute to the discovery, sharing and translation of knowledge that will promote health and development; and

• to benefit the broader community by means of active citizenship.

As a scholarly teacher, my mission is to push the boundaries of transdisciplinary education and research. My teaching and research approach places a strong emphasis on creativity and innovation which I believe is essential in enabling students to develop critical thinking skills and apply their knowledge effectively. I am dedicated to teaching, pioneering research contributions, extensive community engagement, and a commitment to student mentorship. I am committed to further contributing to the advancement of the academy. 

Formal Biography

Prof. Dr. Lynn Hendricks is a practising Research Psychologist and lectures at the Division of Health Systems and Public Health, Department of Global Health, in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University (SU), where she leads the Inclusive Health Research Unit. She holds a joint PhD in Social Science and Public Health. She is a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven in the Department of Social Sciences. She has expertise in methods innovation, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge translation, and leads the Social and Environmental Determinants of Health transdisciplinary interest group at SU. She is the founding director of the research consultancy Research Ambition and founding co-director of the NPO Hearts in Action. She is a fellow of Gilead Public Health as well as a fellow of Microsoft Society & AI. She is a board member of the Centre for HIV/AIDS Management at SU. A long-standing previous executive member of the Psychological Society of South Africa, she now serves as a divisional executive for the Division of Climate and Environmental Psychology. She has a keen interest in creative and co-productive research in communities and works with digital mediums as well as primary arts-based methods. Her work includes co-producing a local and international public art exhibition with the Iziko South African Museum and a community-led documentary about young Cape Flats-based women who contracted HIV perinatally. She has received the Springer Nature Inclusive Health Research Award and the Cochrane Thomas C Chalmers Award in recognition of her work. 

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