The Study of South Africa

The study of South African politics, sociology, culture and anthropology mainly takes place within the Africa Studies Centre, within the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies. Established in 2004, the Centre is the focal point for all graduate level work and faculty research on Africa. The Centre runs an active research programme on South Africa and hosts regular seminars and research groups focused on the region. The Centre also frequently welcomes visiting academics from South African universities. In addition, the study of South Africa also takes place in other departments across the University.  

In the medical sciences, Professor Philip Goulder focuses his research on the South African HIV epidemic, with the principal goal of understanding the role of T-cell immunity in successful long-term immune control of HIV infection in adults and children. The Goulder Group studies groups of children and adults attending clinics in South Africa, in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, and also in Kimberley, Northern Cape, in addition to smaller cohorts of HIV-infected study subjects attending clinics in the Thames Valley region in the UK.

The Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy (CASASP) in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work aims to assist in the eradication of poverty and building of citizenship in South Africa through high quality evidence-based social policy research and training with an international comparative dimension. CASASP works in partnership with the South African government, academic institutions, and non-government agencies that take a similar approach.

In the Department of Sociology, Dr David Stuckler was the principal investigator of an important study into healthcare inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa. The researchers demonstrated that the richest provinces, where the largest concentrations of white people lived, received more government funded healthcare than the poorest provinces.

INET@Oxford is the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. It aims to build a broad platform for research collaboration and practical engagement on economic theory and policy making at the global level. The programme involves a wide number of scholars based across the University of Oxford, including the Saïd Business School, Department of Mathematics, Department of Economics, and Department of International Development.

At INEN@Oxford, James Martin research fellow Dr Janine Aron focuses on monetary and exchange rate policy and macroeconomics in South Africa. Dr Aron frequently collaborates with the South African Reserve Bank and with South African universities.

Research fellows from the Oxford Martin School, along with academics from across the university, have been advising ministers from the South African National Planning commission on how to prepare for the future and plan for 21st century challenges. They have been focusing on topics that are particularly complex and yet a vital part of planning for the future, such as water, energy, food and transport.

At the Saïd Business School, a 3 year study into the opportunities afforded to disadvantaged South African women by becoming a members of the Avon cosmetics sales team showed positive results. The researchers found that these jobs provided a relatively good income and put the women in the top half of black females in their community, and brought them in line with male black South African earners.

The University also houses a wide collection of books and items of interest both from and relating to South Africa.

In November 2011, Oxford’s Museum of Natural History was presented with casts of the skull and hand of Australopithecus sediba, a 1.9 million year old hominid species. The casts were presented to the museum by Professor Loyiso Nongxa, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). The casts were taken from two partial skeletons which were discovered in a cave in the ‘Cradle of Mankind,’ north of Johannesburg in South Africa, in 2008.

The Bodleian library has strong links with South Africa through the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. Among the library’s major collections are included the papers of Cecil Rhodes and papers and records of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.