Maree

Prof Kobus Maree (DEd (Career Counselling); PhD (Learning Facilitation in Mathematics); DPhil (Psychology)) is a Full Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria. His main research interests are facilitating sustainable decent work for all, counseling for self- and career construction, life design counseling, emotional-social intelligence, social responsibility, and learning facilitation in mathematics. Past editor of a number of scholarly journals, for instance, the South African Journal of Psychology, he is the current editor of the African Journal of Career Development and the regional editor for Southern Africa: Early Child Development and Care. Kobus is the sole African representative on the following core scientific (UNESCO) committees: a. UNESCO Chair on Lifelong Guidance and Counseling, and b. the UNESCO University Network and Twinning (UNITWIN) Chair. In addition, he was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) Division 16) in 2018. Moreover, he serves as registrar of the South African Career Development Association, and he accepted appointments as a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State and as Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Southern Queensland. Kobus has received multiple awards for his research. In 2010, he was, for instance, awarded the Stals Prize for exceptional research and contributions to psychology. In 2014, he was awarded the Stals Prize for exceptional research and contributions to Education and he received the Psychological Society of South Africa’s Award for Excellence in Science in 2014. He also received Honorary Membership of the Golden Key International Honour Society for exceptional academic achievements, leadership skills, and community involvement in 2014. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for Teaching and Learning from the University of Pretoria in 2010 and has been nominated successfully as an Exceptional Academic Achiever on four consecutive occasions. He has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation. Kobus has authored or co­authored 90⁺ peer­reviewed articles and 75 books/ book chapters on career counseling, research, and related topics since 2010. In the same period, he supervised 38 doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations and read keynote papers at 25⁺ international conferences (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Egypt, England, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Mauritius, Namibia, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa, The Republic of Korea, Turkey, and the United States of America), and at 22⁺ national conferences. He has also presented invited workshops at conferences in 40⁺ countries across the world on a) integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in career counselling, and b) the art and science of writing scholarly articles in his career-lifetime. Over the past seven years, he has spent a lot of time abroad as a visiting professor at various universities where he presented workshops on, for instance, contemporary developments in career counselling, the art and science of scholarly article writing, and research methodology. He was awarded a fellowship of the IAAP in 2014 and received the =s Fellow Award (Lifetime Award in recognition of a person who has made exceptional contributions to Psychology in her/his life) in 2017.