Rate My Professor Tanya Van Wyk

Professor Tanya van Wyk serves as Head of the Department of Systematic and Historical Theology and associate professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria. An ordained minister of the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa, she earned a BTh, MDiv, MTh, PhD in 2013 on Trinitarian ecclesiology incorporating Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, and an MPhil in Responsible Leadership in 2023 focusing on women's leadership narratives. A long-standing member of the University of Pretoria community, she was appointed Senior Lecturer in spirituality, systematic theology, and ethics around 2018, recognized as associate professor in 2022, and became the youngest Head of Department since 1917 and only the second woman in this role effective January 2025. She chairs the Faculty’s Research Ethics Committee, the Theological Society of South Africa as its first female chairperson since June 2024, and leads the University’s Women Leadership Programme to empower women in leadership positions. Her accolades include an NRF Y2 rating in 2019 upgraded to C2, and a 2018 teaching and learning award. As a research fellow at Harvard Divinity School’s Institute for Peace Studies in Eastern Christianity and associated researcher with Humboldt University’s Programme for Religious Communities and Sustainable Development, she engages in international collaborations.