NRF Women's Month 2026: Prof Lynn Hendricks

Every research journey starts with a question. This Women’s Month, the NRF celebrates women driven by curiosity — researchers whose questions, ideas and determination are expanding our understanding of the world around us. From exploring the unknown to deepening our existing knowledge, curiosity remains at the heart of discovery. We thank all participants for sharing their stories with us.

Prof Lynn Hendricks is an Associate Professor and Lead of the CoCREATE Research Equity Hub, Division of Health Systems and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University. She is currently supported by the NRF-FREF Black Academics Advancement Programme. Her focus is on developing the science of research equity.

How has your affiliation with the NRF impacted your studies/career?

I am currently supported by the 2026 National Research Foundation-FirstRand Empowerment Foundation Black Academics Advancement Programme (BAAP). This support has come at an important stage in my career as I consolidate my research programme and strengthen my profile as an independent research leader.

The award has enabled me to develop a programme of work focused on research equity and inclusive research practice. It gives me the space and resources to produce new knowledge, mentor emerging researchers, build meaningful partnerships with communities and strengthen the CoCREATE Research Equity Hub at Stellenbosch University.

The value of this support extends beyond the funding itself. It represents an investment in the leadership of Black women academics and in the questions we bring to science. It has allowed me to pursue ambitious work grounded in African realities, while building the evidence, collaborations and research capacity needed to influence research practice nationally and internationally.

What is your research focus or area of expertise?

My research asks a simple but important question: how can we make research fairer, more human and more useful to the people whose lives it seeks to understand?

Research is often designed by universities, institutions or funders and then taken into communities. Communities may be asked to share deeply personal experiences, yet have little influence over the questions being asked, the way the research is conducted, or what happens to the findings. My work examines how we can change this.

Through the CoCREATE Research Equity Hub, I bring together communities, researchers, students, health workers, artists and decision-makers to create knowledge collaboratively. We use conversations, storytelling, visual art, body mapping, participatory methods and other creative approaches to make space for forms of knowledge that conventional research can overlook.

I am developing the science of research equity. This means studying who holds power in research, whose knowledge is recognised, who benefits from research, and whether fairer research processes produce different knowledge, better decisions, and improved outcomes. My work spans public health, mental health, HIV, youth wellbeing, health professions education and the social and environmental conditions that shape health.

What sparked your curiosity about your field of research, and what continues to keep you curious?

My curiosity began with my own early introduction to the healthcare system as a child. I grew up in a community where patients and families rarely held decision-making power. Healthcare was something done to people rather than shaped with them. Although patients carried intimate knowledge of their bodies, families, and circumstances, that knowledge was not always heard or valued.

Years later, while working alongside young women living with HIV, people experiencing homelessness, adolescents, young fathers and people living with mental health challenges, I recognised the same pattern in research. People could participate in many studies without seeing meaningful changes in their lives. They were often treated as sources of data rather than as people with knowledge, ideas and the capacity to shape solutions.

Across these experiences, I found myself searching for more inclusive ways of working and designing research spaces where people could tell their authentic stories in their own words and through forms of expression that felt natural to them. I wanted research systems to listen differently, especially to people whose voices had historically been ignored, interpreted by others or excluded altogether.

This led me to question the research system itself. Who decides which questions matter? Whose knowledge is considered credible? Why are communities so often invited into research only after its direction has already been decided? What would research look like if relationships, care, culture, creativity and lived experience were treated as essential parts of rigorous science?

What keeps me curious is that every research relationship reveals another layer. When we create the right conditions, people ask questions that researchers may never have considered. Those questions can change how we conduct a study and even how we understand the problem itself. I remain curious about how African ways of knowing, relating and creating can help us build fairer research and healthcare systems in which people have genuine power to shape the decisions that affect their lives.

What is one thing you wish more people understood about your field of research?

I wish more people understood that research is never neutral and that its impact does not begin only when findings are published, or when policies change. Research can transform both participants and researchers through the process itself, long before that transformation is formally measured.

When people are genuinely heard, recognised as knowledge holders, and given the power to shape the questions and solutions, the research encounter can change how they understand themselves and what they believe is possible. Researchers are also changed by the stories they receive, the relationships they build and the assumptions they are required to confront.

Research equity is therefore not simply about inviting diverse people to participate. It is about sharing power, listening differently, and recognising that transformation can begin in the relationship between people. Better research processes can produce better questions, richer knowledge and solutions that are more relevant to people’s lives.

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