Jacob Dlamini

Jacob S. T. Dlamini is Professor of History at Princeton University and Director of the Program in African Studies. He joined the Princeton faculty in the Department of History in 2015. Dlamini is a historian of Africa, with research interests in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial African history, comparative and global histories of conservation and national parks, environmental history, Sub-Saharan Africa, historiography, intellectual history, political history, and social history. He obtained his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2012 and is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Sussex in England. He is affiliated with Princeton's High Meadows Environmental Institute and serves as an AB Adviser at Mathey College. Dlamini is also a qualified South African field guide.

Dlamini has authored several books that examine key aspects of South African history. His publications include Native Nostalgia (2009), Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (2015), which won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park (2020), which was awarded two book prizes including the 2021 American Historical Association's Martin A. Klein Prize in African History, The Terrorist Album: Apartheid's Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police (2020), and Dying for Freedom: Political Martyrdom in South Africa (2024). At Princeton, he teaches courses such as Africa in the Modern Age, The History of Christianity in Africa: From St. Mark to Desmond Tutu, Humans as Prey: An Environmental History of Human-Animal Relations, and Introduction to the Professional Study of History. His scholarship contributes to discussions on conservation history, as featured in Princeton University publications.

Professional Email: jdlamini@princeton.edu