School of Built Environment & Development Studies

Prof. Yanga Zembe-Zondi is an Associate Professor in the disciple of Community Development and the school’s academic leader of community engagement. Working with a group of academic leaders in the College of Humanities, Prof Zembe contributed her knowledge and experience as a community-based researcher and practitioner that has produced a recommendation to the DVC on cementing community engagement praxis within university processes. She is a driven social scientist with research interests in adolescent sexual health, gender and wealth inequalities (and their impact on sexual health outcomes), gender based violence, health systems surveillance of sexual risk behaviours and intimate partner violence, the role of the family unit in the development and management of adolescent risk behaviour and the use of community participation methods in intervention development. She has led and co-led numerous empirical and intervention-focused research projects to improve community resilience often partnering with township and peri-urban communities, policy makers, and NGOs. Her academic training include a BSS in Social Development  (UCT) and a PhD in Public Health Sciences from Karolinska Institutet, one of the world´s leading medical universities located in Sweden.