Prof. Jacqui Akhurst has recently heard that she has been rated C2 as a researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF). Her motivation for this reflected on more than 40 research publications, which are drawn together by the identity of counselling and its intersections with community psychology. This is particularly pertinent in the current reformulation of the role of counselling psychology in South Africa.
Her collaborations with international teams (in the past in relation to the identities of counselling and educational psychology in South Africa, the work linked to the promotion of peace and peace psychology, and more recent work around the psychological effects of the debt industry, community-based service learning, HIV-related issues) show a capacity to deliver research products consistently in cooperation with other renowned researchers. She has also done ongoing work on peer group supervision (a unique ‘product’ developed for her Rhodes University PhD), represented through a video (see http://lutube.leeds.ac.uk/avsmas/videos/347 , produced 2009) and international collaborations. This was formulated into a well-rated ‘impact case study’ for the UK Research Excellence Framework in 2014 (see http://results.ref.ac.uk/DownloadFile/ImpactCaseStudy/pdf?caseStudyId=36498 ).
From a methodological and research design perspective, her publications (see http://www.ru.ac.za/psychology/people/professorjacquiakhurst/ ) illustrate common themes of action research, phenomenological analysis and activity theory as dominant modes of production. Ethically, she is committed to research that has a strong interventionist thrust, in order for participants to benefit at least as much as the researcher(s). She have mentored four colleagues as co-supervisors of postgraduates and led an interdisciplinary team on a funded project investigating Polish students’ experiences. Further examples of her mentoring role are evidenced by numerous (17) co-publications with former students.