Welcome to my website!

My personal mission statement is: 
“To honour God through living out my faith moment-by-moment and through inspiring and facilitating spirituality, resilience and depth in others.”

I studied social work at the University of Cape Town, where I obtained my Masters Degree in clinical social work in 1997 with distinction.  In 2004 I completed my doctoral studies in social work at the Rand Afrikaans University, on the topic “Multicultural scale development in social work”.

I spent the first several years of my career employed as an occupational social worker with the SA Navy in Simonstown.  In 1997 I moved to Pretoria to start a social work research department for the SA Department of Defence.  I later became the manager of an interdisciplinary team of health researchers at the Military Psychological Institute.

I joined the University of Johannesburg in April 2007 and am Associate Professor of social work.  I supervise several masters and doctoral dissertations.  I am teaching courses in generalist social work; health and illness; and clinical social work (more here).  I have several research projects ticking over, including a study on the psychosocial vulnerability of social work university students (more here). 

I have an eclectic range of interests including family violence, clinical social work, Jungian psychology, multicultural practice, men as victims, adult education, HIV prevention and training, statistics, occupational social work, health, women and feminism, resilience and salutogenic theory, monitoring and evaluation, research, narrative therapy, group work, outcomes based education, the use of IT in human services and social work supervision. 

I have published several peer-reviewed papers, and various other printed and conference papers.  You can read my publications by clicking here.  

At the end of 2009 I completed a Bachelor of Theology degree at the Theological Education by Extension College (TEE) - more about that here. I am currently studying towards an honour degree in systematic theology. I have a particular interest in theologies of the Trinity and the atonement. I work as a course advisor for TEEC (on their course about Christian Responses to HIV and AIDS), marking for that course and a final academic report at the end of the BTh. I also tutor students in the Pretoria area who are studying towards a TEEC qualification - more about that here.

I am married to Trina, a physiotherapist originally from Ireland, and have a 12-year old son, Erin Andile (more on the family here).  In my ‘spare time’, I read, play the piano, sing (more on music here), facilitate a Bible study group, paint mandalas (more here), cook, preach (more here), garden, study theology and sleep. At the end of 2010 I started running and am gradually getting into that.

If you have enjoyed my work, I'd love to hear from you - contact me.

You can also find me on Face Book - search for 'Adrian van Breda'.

Page last updated: 26 April 2011