I currently teach at Rhodes University, the Eastern Cape, where I direct the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU). I am 10th generation South African, and my work focuses on South Africa; I have also done research in Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. My main areas include the neo-liberal restructuring of state-owned corporations; trade unions and other working-class movements, including labour and left history; anarchism and syndicalism. I have a long history of involvement in working-class movements, and in workers and popular education. My writings have been translated into a dozen or so languages, among them Croat, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Sotho, Spanish, and Zulu.
I have given 75 or so academic paper presentations, including two keynotes, and around that to popular and working-class movements; produced four journal special issues and five books; published 50+ academic articles and book chapters, 22 reference entries; 150+ “popular” pieces; and have done six research reports. I have won prizes from Labor History journal and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) for my work. I have taught at three universities, for the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), DITSELA and the Global Labour University (GLU), and have taught in (and been a coordinator for) the NUMSA/ Wits short course programme, merSETA/ Rhodes/ metalworkers’ unions short courses, and the Vuyisile Mini Workers Schools.
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Lucien van der Walt 