Professor Sharlene Swartz is a divisional executive in the HSRC’s Inclusive Economic Development research division. She holds a PhD in Sociology of Education from the University of Cambridge (2003). Prof. Swartz specialises in "navigational capacities" for the just inclusion of youth in societies in the Global South. She researches and writes extensively on transformative education, reimagined inclusive economic development, and decolonising and emancipatory practices in research.

Previous and current experience and special projects
Prof. Swartz was formerly an executive director in the Education and Skills Development programme at the HSRC, a position which she held from 2019 until 2020. From 2017 to 2018, she was deputy executive director of its Human and Social Development unit.

Prof. Swartz is the principal investigator of a longitudinal research study, The Imprint of Education, funded by the Mastercard Foundation. The study investigates how higher education impacts the lives of first-generation students and how they, in turn, affect their worlds.

Previous studies include young fathers, race and education; the role of education on alleviating poverty; and peer education. Before embarking on her graduate studies, she spent 12 years at a youth NGO where she pioneered peer-led social justice and life skills education programmes.

Publications, achievements and positions
Prof. Swartz has authored six books and edited five more. She has also published 70 scientific articles and book chapters in local and international peer-reviewed academic journals, 14 research reports and an ethnographic documentary.

Most recently, she co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. She has also presented more than a hundred-and-twenty papers and posters at local and international conferences including a number of keynote addresses.

Prof Swartz served as President 2018-2023 and as an executive member of the International Sociological Association Sociology of Youth Research Committee between 2018 and 2023. She is a member of the Lancet commission on adolescence, a past executive member of the Association for Moral Education and is on the editorial boards of theJournal of Moral Education, Journal of Youth Studies, Youth and Globalisation and Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali.

Sharlene has been involved in multiple civil society organisations focussing on youth and justice and is an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare. She has held committee positions with the National Research Foundation and has been a visiting fellow at the Faculty of Education and Centre for Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, and at the Centre for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.