Bernedette Muthien

Bernedette Muthien has held executive and senior management positions in academia, civil society and the public sector in South Africa and abroad for over twenty years . She is an accomplished facilitator, researcher and poet who designs, implements and evaluates projects for diverse institutions locally and internationally.

Until recently Bernedette Muthien served part-time on South Africa’s Constitutional Commission for Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Rights, where she was responsible for Parliamentary Liaison, Research and Policy Development, and Public Education. She was also Deputy Director General: Social Transformation and Economic Empowerment in the Presidency, where she served in the high level Economic Cluster.

She has over 200 publications and conference presentations, some of which have been translated from English into at least 16 other languages. She was the first Fulbright-Amy Biehl fellow at Stanford University, and holds postgraduate degrees in Political Science from the University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List), and Stellenbosch University (Andrew W Mellon Fellow).

She served on the Executive Council of the International Peace Research Association, is Convenor of the Global Political Economy Commission, and was Co-Founder of the African Peace Research and Education Association. She serves on various international advisory boards, including the international journals Human Security Studies and Journal of Human Security, as well as the International Institute on Peace Education. She also serves on the Steering Committee of South African Women in Development (SAWID) in the Western Cape.

On the Board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) she chairs the SABC Foundation, and serves on the statutory committees on Social and Ethics, as well as Public and Commercial Broadcasting. On the board of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), she serves on the Audit, Risk & IT; Legal & Ethics; and Governance & Human Resources statutory committees. She also Chairs the Council of Robben Island Museum.

She is skilled in conflict resolution and mediation, and has excellent programme design, development, management and evaluation expertise, as well as financial and business acumen, in addition to extensive marketing, social and other media and public liaison skills.