Speaker Biography: Dr. Josephine Naidoo
Josephine Naidoo completed her undergraduate training in the Republic of South Africa.
She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois while studying under an award from the Institute of International Education.
At the point of her retirement, July 1, 1997, she was Professor of Psychology at Wilfred Laurier University(WLU), Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, where she was engaged in teaching, thesis supervision, research, university and community activities for twenty-five years.
During this period she was the recipient of several external and internal research and travel grants. Included in these grants were awards from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Multicultural Directorate, Secretary of State, Ottawa. This funding facilitated the establishment of a solid program of research on South Asian and immigrant communities in Canada. Publication in refereed journals, book chapters, government documents, manuscripts, and the popular media emerged from this research.
Her work has been widely presented at international, national, and community conferences.
From 1986-88 Dr. Naidoo served on a Federal Government Task Force studying mental health issues affecting immigrants and refugees in Canada and from 1990-93 she was invited member of the Executive Committee on Intercultural/Interracial Education in Professional Schools involved in a national study of this topic supported by a Federal Government grant.
For the period 1994-96, she served as Secretary-General of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, the main professional organization in her area of expertise. She was a member of the WLU Faculty Association (WLUFA) Special Force on Employment Equity 1994-95 and a member of the Status of Women Committee for the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), concerned with gender equity issues.
Between 1983-1991 she was an active participant in the South Asia, Ontario, consortium of scholars on South Asian Studies, based at the University of Toronto, and in 1991 she served as invited moderator-coordinator for the Spicer Commission Citizen Forum on the future of Canada, engaging in outreach to ethnic minorities.
In recent years, she has been the recipient of several community awards, among them, the Octoberfest Professional Woman of the Year Achievement Award, and the distinguished National Indo-Canadian award.
Dr. Naidoo’s sabbatical year, 1993-94, was spent in Durban, South Africa where she was based in the Psychology Department at the University of Durban-Westville. She engaged in research on Asian Indian and African communities and lectured in the university and community on multicultural issues, cross-cultural psychology, and education for living in democratic pluralistic societies.
She served as an election observer in the historic first democratic elections in South Africa, April 27-28, 1994, and participated in rallies, peace marches, and socio-political seminars/workshops in place at the time.
Currently, Dr. Naidoo is broadening the scope of her ethnic research interests and is involved in testing the generality of her Canadian findings for populations in the Asian Indian diaspora. To facilitate this endeavour, she engaged in research and other scholarly activities at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, England in 1987, and more recently at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa in 1997.
