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About Peter Christopher Julius Vale
Prof Peter Vale is Research Professor of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg, and Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS). He previously worked as Director of Research at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA); Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, where he was also Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics; he was also Co-Director (with Rob Davies) of the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape; and, later, Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at the same university. He has served as UNESCO Professor of African Studies at Utrecht University, Professor of Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and Visiting Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, a member of the Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, and a Fellow of the World Academy for Arts and Science. He was recently elected as a member of the African Academy of Science.
Google Scholar URL: https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=-oLobmUAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Involves:
Prof Vale’s research interests include social thought, intellectual traditions in South Africa, the future and politics of higher education, and the origins of international relations in South Africa, and he has published extensively in all these areas.
Research Relevance:
Professor Vale’s research interests have touched on the origins of International Relations as a field of inquiry in South Africa in the early twentieth century. He has published extensively both in South Africa and abroad on other issues, including the rise of leftist thinkers in South Africa, South African foreign policy and Southern Africa’s international relations and other related fields. His recently co-edited books have been on South African intellectual traditions (with Lawrence Hamilton and Estelle H Prinsloo), critical perspectives on South Africa after 20 years of democracy (with Estelle H. Prinsloo), and Political Studies in South Africa (with Pieter Fourie). Under Prof Peter Vale’s Directorship from 1984, the Institute for Social and Economic Research’s research agenda directly and indirectly exposed the consequences of the apartheid political economy on the black inhabitants of the Eastern Cape.