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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).
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