SANDRA SWART is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She received her DPhil in Modern History from Oxford University in 2001, while simultaneously obtaining an MSc (with distinction) in Environmental Change and Management, also at Oxford. She studies the socio-environmental history of southern Africa, with a particular focus on the shifting relationship between humans and animals. She is an editor of the Brill book series African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities, an editor of the South African Historical Journal and past president of the Southern African Historical Society and current co-Vice President of European Society for Environmental History. It has been her privilege to supervise 21 successful doctoral students from Botswana, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. She has authored and co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in academic books, co-authored two books, co-edited three books (including

Co-edited with Emily O’Gorman, Mark Carey and William San Martín, The Routledge Handbook of Environmental History (Routledge, 2024) and is the sole author of Riding High – Horses, Humans and History in South Africa (Witwatersrand University Press, 2010 and The Lion’s Historian: Africa’s Animal Past (Jacana, 2023).

DPhil in Modern History, Oxford University, 1998-2001.

MSc, with Distinction, Environmental Change and Management, Oxford University, 2001.

MA, History, cum laude, University of Natal, 1996-1997.

BA Honours, History, cum laude, University of Natal, 1995.

BA, summa cum laude, University of Natal, Durban, 1992-1994.

Professional Appointments

Founder and Director, African Anthropocenes Research Center, Stellenbosch University, from 2024

Departmental Chair, Stellenbosch University, from 2022

Full Professor, Stellenbosch University, from 2015