Professor Roshan Galvaan

Position

Professor - Division of Occupational Therapy, Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town

Email: roshan.galvaan@uct.ac.za    
Tel: 021-4066042

• Qualifications

  
  BSc (OccTher) MSc (OccTher) PhD Cape Town

• Areas of Interest

  Roshan Galvaan, PhD, BSc (OT), MSc (OT), is the previous Head of the Occupational Therapy Division at UCT and, as a transformational leader,  lead the Faculty Mental Health Working group. She aims to make critical contributions to the discipline of occupational science and has actively pursued avenues to translate research into practice across professions. Professor Galvaan theorized community development practice from an occupational perspective leading to the development of the Occupation-based Community Development framework as a guideline for praxis. In 2015, she received the UCT Social Responsiveness Award, recognizing her longstanding collaborations through engaged scholarship with multiple community partners.

   

  Professor Galvaan has lead curriculum change processes in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, promoting social justice through curriculum development and activism within the university, nationally and internationally. She is an alumnus fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Her research explicates responses to the complexities of human occupation in relation to contexts of marginalization and exclusion. In addition to numerous publications, she recently co-edited two books: ‘Concepts in Occupational Therapy: Understanding Southern Perspectives’, a book co-produced with colleagues in India and ‘Partnerships in Action: Transforming learning practices through interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement’, a book demonstrating the utility of occupational science in improving the quality of basic education in South Africa.

   

  Her current research focus areas include:

  • Occupational choice in contexts of social inequality
  • Occupation-based Community development
  • Supported Education and personal recovery in higher education