Mary Crewe is currently the Director of the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender (CSA&G) at the University of Pretoria. She has a background in education and sociology and lectured for many years on: Education and Development, Education in the 3rd World, Social and Critical Theory and the Political Economy of Education.

She established the CSA&G (as the CSA) in 1999 and guided its growth and evolution as an internationally recognized organisation that is renowned for critical and innovative thinking in its research, programme development and implementation. Mary was instrumental in setting up work and links across Africa and internationally with the SADC Parliamentary Forum, networks of women living with HIV in Africa, the Ethical Globalisation  Initiative, Parliamentarians for Women’s Health, Yale University and the internationally focused Critical HIV&AIDS Research Initiative (CHARI). She is a popular local and international speaker and advisor to UN agencies, governments and other development sectors.

She was the co-chair of the Durban 2000 International AIDS Conference for Track D: Social Impact and on the organising committee for the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona in 2001 and served on the conference organising committee for the 2003 South African AIDS Conference. She gave a plenary address at the Bangkok International AIDS Conference on the impact of AIDS on education in July 2004. She is a founding member of the Association for the Social Sciences and Humanities in HIV (ASSHH) and one of the Co-Chairs of its 3rd International Conference in 2015.

Mary also Co-Chaired the 2016 South African AIDS Conference. Mary has authored books on AIDS and is widely published in academic and other popular publications. She serves on the editorial boards of Sex Education, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Journal of Higher Education and Education and Prevention.