Biography
I grew up in South Africa and studied at the universities of Cape Town and Oxford. I have taught at the universities of Sussex and Queen Mary, London.
My teaching and research concentrates on the history of modern South Africa from the early-nineteenth century to the present. I have published widely on the development of racial segregation and apartheid in all its aspects: political, ideological, intellectual and institutional. I have particular interests in the history of science, empire, Africa, and global intellectual history.
Subject groups/Research projects
Departments and Institutes
Research
- Racial segregation and apartheid
- The history of race, eugenics, nationalism and ethnicity
- Empire and Commonwealth
- Colonial science and knowledge
- Prehistory, paleontology, astronomy
- Human rights and international institutions
- African history
- Global intellectual history
Publications
acial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa, 1919-36 (London, 1989)
Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge, 1995)
The African National Congress (Stroud,2000)
A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820-2000 (Oxford, 2006)
South Africa’s Struggle for Human Rights (Johannesburg and Ohio, 2012)
Apartheid: 1948-1994 (Oxford, 2014)
Journal and book chapters since 2010 include:
2010 `Keith Hancock, Race, and Empire’, in C.Hall and K.McClelland (eds), Race, Nation and Empire. Making Histories 1750 to the Present’ , (Manchester, 2010)
2010 `South Africa: Paradoxes in the Place of Race’, in Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Eugenics (Oxford),274-288
2011` South Africa and South Africans: Nationality, Belonging, Citizenship’ opening chapter in The Cambridge History of South Africa, Volume 2 (Cambridge), 17-65
2011 `Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 “Wind of Change” Speech’, Historical Journal 54, 4 (2011), 1087-1114
2014 `Uncovering the Historic Strands of Egalitarian Liberalism in South Africa’, Theoria 61, 3 (2014) pp.7-24
2015 `Were there Political Alternatives in the Wake of the Sharpeville-Langa Violence in South Africa, 1960? Journal of African History 56, 1 (2015), pp.119-142
2015 `Racial Irredentism, Ethnogenesis, and White Supremacy in High-Apartheid South Africa’, Kronos, 41, 1(2015), pp.236-264
2017 `The Commonwealth and South Africa: From Smuts to Mandela’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294790
Teaching and Supervisions
Africa, Empire and Commonwealth, South Africa
I have extensive experience as a supervisor and am happy to be approached by prospective M.Phil and doctoral students
