Gavin Williams

Gavin Williams was born in Pretoria in 1943. He graduated at the
University of Stellenbosch, the intellectual cradle of Apartheid, where
he was active in the liberal student opposition. As a Rhodes Scholar to
Oxford, he wrote his B. Phil. thesis on the political sociology of
Western Nigeria. In 2013, he received from Rhodes University a D. Litt.
by examination of his published work. He taught sociology at Durham
University from 1967 to 1970, and again from 1972 to 1975. He was a
research fellow at the University of Sussex and associate at NISER,
Ibadan from 1970-1972. He lectured in politics and sociology at St
Peter’s College, Oxford from 1975 until 2010, when the College elected
him Emeritus Fellow. At Oxford University, he has taken an active part
in promoting the values of academic freedom and of open ideas. Since
1990, he has been able to teach, research, and examine at several South
African universities. Gavin was one of the founding editors of the
Review of African Political Economy. His research on Nigerian themes,
discussed in this book of essays, extended to political economy,
politics, class consciousness, rural inequalities and societies,
agricultural policies, economic strategies, the World Bank, and
development ideologies. Nigerian perspectives informed his own and his
students’ research and ideas on places beyond Nigeria. He is currently
researching the economic and social histories of wine in South African
from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, These encompass wine
production, slave relations, slave emancipation, social stratification,
free and unfree farm labour, supplies and management of labour, the
‘dop’ system and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, market regulations,
discourses of modernity, the transformations of the industry, and black
economic empowerment. Gavin was awarded the 2014 ASAUK Distinguished
Africanist Award ‘in recognition of’ his ‘significant contribution
during four decades of research and writing on the political economy of
Africa’ and ‘leadership in the field of African studies and his
inspiring role as a teacher and research supervisor.’ He takes great
pride that his graduate students have dedicated five of their books to
him (with others).