The Department of Psychology was privileged to host Prof Peter Muris (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Maastricht University) for a research visit in March 2019. Prof Muris has been appointed as Professor Extraordinary at the Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, since 2015. In 2018 this position has been renewed for another term until the end of 2020. Prof Muris has proven specialized expertise and is internationally acknowledged for his research in the fields of developmental psychopathology in youth, anxiety, personality and cognitive behaviour therapy. His CV and research outputs in this regards makes for impressive reading. Prof Muris already has an established history of enthusiastic and productive involvement with the Department of Psychology and we have collaborated actively on research projects since 2002. During the research visit, he presented at a departmental colloquium on the topic “Understanding and treating children with mental health problems (at least in the Netherlands)“. It was extremely well attended (full house!) by staff, students and mental health practitioners.
Commentary by Peter himself on the visit: “Really enjoyed being in South Africa again. The Stellenbosch campus and the atmosphere in the psychology building is breathing academia. I liked it to meet people of the staff as well as students and had some good conversations on life in general and discussions on research in particular. Apart from work and university, an absolute highlight was the Argus, nowadays known as the Cape Town cycling tour that I did together with Ashraf Kagee. 109 kilometers through the beautiful scenery of your great country with lots of people from different cultural backgrounds united either to cycle or to encourage the cyclers on their ride. One of the best experiences I ever had.”
– Helene Loxton (March, 2019)