Dr Rory Pilossof is senior lecturer at the University of Free State, in the Department of Economics. This appointment contributes to my profile as a scholar and is recognition of the multidisciplinary elements of my work. In 2017 I was awarded an Advanced Newton Fellowship for a three-year research project into labour and labour migration in southern Africa and a visiting research fellowship at the University of Kent, UK.
He enrolled at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2003, where he earned support via the Charles Struben Scholarship, an Ernest Oppenheimer Trust Bursary, and Beit Trust Emergency Support. In 2007 he began his PhD at the University of Sheffield on white farming discourse and identity, funded by the highly competitive Overseas Research Studentship. His research there was supported by the Royal Historical Society Research Funding, the Excellence Exchange Scheme, and the Petrie Watson Exhibition.
After his PhD he undertook a postdoctoral position at the University of Pretoria (UP), where he turned his thesis into a monograph, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices From Zimbabwe, (2012) published with the University of Cape Town Press and Weaver Press in Zimbabwe.