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.

Prof van Wyk’s research encompasses systematic theology, including doctrines of the Trinity, eschatology, ecclesiology, and theological anthropology; political theology and reconciling diversity; feminist theology and ethics; gender, religion, and sustainable development aligned with UN SDG Goal 5; mystic Christian spirituality; and Christian ethics addressing human sexuality and euthanasia. Notable publications include the edited volume “Being Spiritual while doing research” (LitVerlag, 2024), “Unhiding women: Decolonising the mind of a female systematic theologian” (HTS Theological Studies, 2023), “By blood or by choice? On relational autonomy and the familial ties that bind us” (Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2022), “Protesting patriarchal power: The task of political theology in creating solidarity and sustaining activism” (Concilium, 2020), and “To die and to let die: A just theology of ceding space” (Acta Theologica, 2020). She has supervised 24 master’s and 5 doctoral students, contributing significantly to theological scholarship on gender equity, power dynamics in theology, and religion’s role in sustainable development.