Kevin Durrheim is professor of psychology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His interest in political psychology comes from growing up in a divided and rapidly changing society in South Africa. His Ph.D. (University of Cape Town, 1995) investigated attitudes – especially ambivalence – toward political, religious and civil authorities. More recently, he has studied the social psychological processes that work to conserve racism as a social and interpersonal way of life despite monumental efforts to combat it. This work on the social psychology of racial contact, attitudes and stereotyping is published in over 70 journal articles and book chapters, and in his co-authored book (with John Dixon) entitled Racial Encounter (Routledge, 2005).

Although he is best known for qualitative, theory-driven research, his approach to knowledge production is eclectic. He has co-edited widely prescribed research methods (TerreBlanche, Durrheim  & Painter, 2005, Research in Practice. University of Cape Town Press) and statistics textbooks (Tredoux & Durrheim, 2003, Numbers, Hypotheses & Conclusions. University of Cape Town Press), and has recently set up a centre to run surveys in South Africa.

One of his main motivations is to build capacity for social science research in South Africa, and to build scholarly networks between the developed and developing world. He has been an ISSP member since 1994 and served a term of the Governing Council of the Psychological Association of South Africa.