Sandra Scott Swart

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.

It has been her privilege to supervise doctoral students from Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. She has authored and co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in academic books, co-authored two books, co-edited two books 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 Media, 2023).

She lives in a happy herd of two heart-breaking horses, Aztec and Voodoo, a handsome ex-Navy captain and the most beautiful dog on earth, Rio, and the naughtiest, Kodiak.