Dr Hilary Sapire
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Overview
Overview
Biography
I grew up in South Africa and studied at the universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand. I have been teaching at Birkbeck College since 1991, following a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. I am a past editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies and member of its Editorial Board.
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Research
Research
Research overview
Having published articles on African urbanization, the making of the apartheid city and the political cultures of South African townships, I co-wrote a book on the tragic encounter between an isiXhosa African prophet, Nontetha Nwenkwe and the psychiatric profession in South Africa during the interwar years. I have co-edited a book and journal special issue on the history of Southern African liberation movements and the global anti-apartheid movement. Drawing on Leverhulme Trust funded-research, I am currently completing a book on royal tours of Southern Africa, popular monarchism and the ambiguities of empire loyalism, and I am collaborating on a book project with Dr Cindy McCreery of University of Sydney, on ‘Violence, honour and memory in the colonial Cape and Natal: Prince Alfred’s tour of 1860’. The courses I offer in the Department reflect my interests in African history, global history; colonial and post-colonial history’ and modern South Africa
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I have supervised doctoral students working on: Black British engagement with the Anti-Apartheid Movement; sport and the Edwardian Empire; liberal opposition politics in apartheid South Africa; Umkhonto we Size; the history of the University of Ibadan; gender and international solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement; and nineteenth-century Cape history. I am currently supervising dissertations on Protestant missionaries in South Asia and West Africa, and on the South African War.
Current doctoral researchers
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ANN COTTERRELL
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CONRAD COMPAGNA
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LUKE SPYROPOULOS
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THOMAS CRIPPS
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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AMELIA CLEGG
Teaching
Undergraduate:
- Britannia’s Embrace: The British Empire and the World
- Colonial Encounters: Race, Identity and Cultural Exchange in the British Empire
- The Colonial Gaze – Western Perceptions of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 1600-1960
- Empires in Comparative Perspective
Postgraduate:
- Disease and Society in Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Africa in the European Imagination
- Apartheid: Culture Politics and Society
Teaching modules
- Healing, Health and Modernity in African History (HICL035S7)
- Research Skills for Historians (SSHC386Z7)
- The Colonial Gaze: Western Perceptions of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 1600-1960 (SSHC393S6)
- Exploring the Past (SSHC407S5)
- The Modern World (SSHC411S4)
- Decolonising History/Histories of Decolonisation (SSHC528S7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Sapire, Hilary and Grundlingh, A. (2018) Rebuffing Royals? Afrikaners and the royal visit to South Africa in 1947’. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46 (3), pp. 524-551. ISSN 0308-6534.
- Sapire, Hilary (2018) The Prince and Afrikaners: the royal visit of 1925. Royal Studies Journal 5 (1), pp. 107-125. ISSN 2057-6730.
- Sapire, Hilary (2013) Township histories, insurrection and liberation in late Apartheid South Africa. South African Historical Journal 65 (2), pp. 167-198. ISSN 0258-2473.
- Sapire, Hilary (2012) Ambiguities of loyalism: the Prince of Wales in India and Africa, 1921-2 and 25. History Workshop Journal 73 (1), pp. 37-65. ISSN 1363-3554.
- Sapire, Hilary (2011) African loyalism and its discontents: the royal tour of South Africa, 1947. Historical Journal 54 (1), pp. 215-240. ISSN 0018-246X.
- Sapire, Hilary (2009) Liberation movements, exile and international solidarity: an introduction. Journal of Southern African Studies 35 (2), pp. 271-286. ISSN 0305-7070.
- Sapire, Hilary (2009) Liberation movements, exile, and international solidarity: an introduction. Journal of Southern African Studies 35 (2), pp. 271-286. ISSN 0305-7070.
- Sapire, Hilary (2000) Engendering segregation: 'black women's work' in the urban American south and South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. South African Historical Journal 43 (1), pp. 39-80. ISSN 0258-2473.
- Edgar, R. and Sapire, Hilary (1999) Dry bones: the return of Nontetha, an Eastern Cape Prophet. South African Historical Journal 40 (1), pp. 95-113. ISSN 0258-2473.
- Sapire, Hilary (1994) Apartheid's 'testing ground': urban 'native policy' and African politics in Brakpan South Africa 1943-1948. Journal of African History 35 (1), pp. 99-123. ISSN 0021-8537.
- Sapire, Hilary (1992) Politics and protest in shack settlements of the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging region 1980-1990. Journal of Southern African Studies 18 (3), pp. 670-697. ISSN 0305-7070.
Book
- Sapire, Hilary and Saunders, C., eds. (2012) Southern African liberation struggles: new local, regional and global perspectives. Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press. ISBN 9781919895932.
- Edgar, R. and Sapire, Hilary (1999) African apocalypse: the story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a twentieth century South African prophet. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780896802087.
- Alexander, P. and Halpern, R. and Marks, S. and Sapire, Hilary, eds. (1997) Beyond white supremacy: towards a new agenda for the comparative histories of South Africa and the United States. London, UK: Institute of Commonwealth Studies. ISBN 9781855070813.
Book Section
- Sapire, Hilary (2018) The 1947 Royal Tour in Smuts' Raj: South African Indian responses. In: Aldrich, R. and McCreery, C. (eds.) Royals on Tour: Politics, Pageantry and Colonialism. Studies in Imperialism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526109378.
- Sapire, Hilary (2016) ‘”We have seen the son of heaven/We have seen the Son of our Queen”: African Encounters with Prince Alfred on his Royal Tour, 1860. In: Nugent, M. and Carter, S. (eds.) Mistress of Everything: Queen Victoria in Indigenous Worlds. Studies in Imperialism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. pp. 25-53. ISBN 9781784991401.
- Sapire, Hilary (2012) Introduction. In: Sapire, Hilary and Saunders, C. (eds.) Southern African Liberation Struggles: New Local, Regional and Global Perspectives. Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press. ISBN 9781919895932.
Editorial
- Sapire, Hilary and Beall, J. (1995) Introduction: urban change and urban studies in Southern Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 21 (1), pp. 3-17. Taylor & Francis. ISSN 0305-7070.