Cheryl Hendricks is a professor and head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She previously worked at the Institute for Security Studies first as program head for the Southern Africa Human Security Programme and then as senior research fellow in the Conflict Management and Peacebuilding Division. She holds a PhD in government and international relations from the University of South Carolina and a Masters in southern African studies from the University of York, England. Her substantive knowledge areas include gender, peace, and security; security sector reform/security sector governance; and peacebuilding and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as Regional Security Architecture.