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, a position she assumed on 1 January 2025 as the first woman in the faculty's history. She earned her BTh, MDiv, MTh, and PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Pretoria in 2013, with her doctoral research on Trinitarian ecclesiology incorporating Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia. In 2023, she completed an MPhil in Business Management with a focus on responsible leadership. An ordained minister in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa, van Wyk lectures in Christian Spirituality, Christian Ethics, and Systematic Theology. She chairs the Faculty Research Ethics Committee, leads the university's Women Leadership Programme to empower women leaders, and was elected chairperson of the Theological Society of South Africa in June 2024, marking her as the first woman in that role.

Van Wyk's research interests encompass political theology, Trinitarian theology, reconciling diversity through inclusive language, gender and feminist theology and ethics, and religion's contributions to sustainable development, particularly gender equity under UN SDG Goal 5. Recognized as an NRF-rated scholar with a C2 rating, she holds a research fellowship at Harvard Divinity School's Institute for Peace Studies in Eastern Christianity and is an associated researcher with Humboldt University's Programme for Religious Communities and Sustainable Development. Her scholarly output includes editing “Being Spiritual while doing research” (LitVerlag, 2024), articles such as “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 earlier publications like “Church as Heterotopia” (HTS, 2014) and “Political Theology as critical theology” (HTS, 2015). Through her leadership and publications, she influences theological discourse on inclusivity and social justice.