Dr Melanie Cilliers is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest, holding a prestigious NIHSS/SU postdoctoral fellowship. In 2020, Dr Cilliers earned her PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Stellenbosch, and has since focused on understanding the collective influence of structural violence on South African people. Her current research explores the nature and consequences of dehumanization in South African organizational settings, as well as the protective factors that mitigate against these experiences. Through her work, Dr Cilliers seeks to highlight the destructive outcomes of systemic and institutional violence in unequal social systems and promote social justice and equality in South Africa and beyond.

Recent Publications

Journal articles

Deist, M., & Fourie, M. M. (2023). (Not) part of the team: Racial empathy bias in a South African minimal group study. Plos one, 18(4), e0283902.

Fourie, M. M., Deist, M., & Moore-Berg, S. L. (2022). Hierarchies of being human: Intergroup dehumanization and its implication in present-day South Africa. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 28(3), 345–360.

Email: mel.deist@gmail.com | Tel: +27 21 808 4047