Claude-Hélène Mayer

Claude-Hélène Mayer is a Professor in Industrial and Organisational Psychology at the Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. and an Adjunct Professor at the Europa Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She is also a Research Associate at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.
==Biography==
Claude-Hélène Mayer was born in Göttingen, Germany. She studied in Germany, England and South Africa and conducted her Post-doctoral degree at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. For a time, she held positions at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen (2006-2007), Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (2009-2012) and at the University of South Africa (UNISA), in Pretoria, South Africa (2012-2016). Claude has been a visiting professor at various universities in Germany, Poland, South Africa, India, Vietnam and Canada; she is a Semester at Sea Alumni from the Fall 2022 voyage where she taught Global Studies and Conflict Management and Communication.
==Education==
Claude-Hélène Mayer holds a Master (hist-phil) and a Doctoral (Dr. disc.pol) degree in Cultural Anthropology, Intercultural Didactics and Socio-Economics of Rural Development from the Georg, August-University, Göttingen, Germany. She further holds a MSc degree in Crime Science, Investigation and Intelligence from the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK as well as a MSc Psychology degree from the Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. Claude holds further a Ph.D in Psychology from the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa and a Ph.D. in Management from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She holds a Venia Legendi from the Europa Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) Germany. Her Venia Legendi is in Psychology with focus on work, organizational, and cultural psychology.
==Contributions to the Sciences==
During the early period of her works, she focused on intercultural conflict management and mediation, from there turning towards research on salutogenesis, and mental health and well-being and women research. Based on this research focus, Claude has become a major contributor to research in positive psychology, together with pioneers such as Professor Paul T.P. Wong in Toronto, Canada and Professor Llewellyn van Zyl, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. She has further contributed in the past years to intercultural research on the positive transformation of emotions which are often described as negative, such as shame, and research on love in cultural and intercultural contexts. 
Since 2017, her contributions on psychobiography are impactful, whereby her main contributions to the field of psychobiography are threefold:
# She has expanded the predominantly psychoanalytic approach towards a positive psychology approach in psychobiography.
# She has contributed to shifting the focus in psychobiography from male extraordinary individuals towards female extraordinary individuals.
# She has led the latest discourse on shifting psychobiography into a global science which does not only take Western individuals and contexts into consideration, but which also includes non-WEIRD individuals and contexts.
She is also one of the foundational members of the International psychobiography group of the psychohistory forum together with Professor Paul Elovitz and Inna Rozentsvit, PhD.
Being a Cultural Anthropologist, her research is, from the beginning on, impacted by the analysis of cultural, intercultural and transcultural aspects. However, based on her various disciplinary backgrounds, her research works are further informed by transdisciplinary approaches. 
Further contributions to the sciences are based on her work on African cultures in the business world and the promotion of African-based research in the world. She is part of the Africa in Science initiative. She thereby focuses primarily on the technologization in African contexts and the transformations towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In her work on the 4IR she argues that Developing countries need to create their own processes of the 4IR which is culturally adequate and adjusted to the socio-cultural, economic and political contexts.
Additionally, she has published bilingual intercultural children’s and teen’s books in English and German to draw attention to developing intercultural competences at an early age.
==Editorial roles==
Claude-Hélène Mayer is an Editorial Board Member of Frontiers in Psychology and an Associate Regional Editor, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management. 
Category:German people
Category:1975 births