Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge in South Africa: Global Science, National Horizon

Magdalene Fellow, Professor Saul Dubow, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, will be giving his inaugural lecture titled Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge in South Africa: Global Science, National Horizons, on 28 November in The Sir Humphrey Cripps auditorium.

Professor Dubow has researched the history of racial segregation and apartheid in 19th and 20th century South Africa. He also has interests in the history of ideas and political thought, and in empire and commonwealth.

In this lecture, the Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History turns to the history of science in South Africa. He shows how astronomy and palaeontology – both sciences rooted in ideas of deep time – have been important to post-apartheid conceptions of South Africa as a site of global importance and source of universal humanity. He will contrast this to earlier phases of South African history where similar conceptions of deep time and human origins were oriented to support claims to white supremacy.

Event speaker

Professor Saul Dubow

College positions: Professorial Fellow, Garden Steward

Professor Saul Dubow is the Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History. His teaching and research concentrates on the history of modern South Africa from the early-nineteenth century to the present.

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