Rate My Professor Neil Roos

Professor Neil Roos serves as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and holds the position of professor of history at the University of Fort Hare. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Bophuthatswana. Roos is a social historian whose research examines histories of everyday life in societies marked by great inequality, with particular attention to the beneficiaries and perpetrators of apartheid in South Africa. His scholarship explores themes of accommodation, choice, docility, racism, racial identity, and racial violence among ordinary whites during the apartheid era.

In 2024, Roos published the book Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society: Social Histories of Accommodation with Indiana University Press and Wits University Press. The work received the University of Fort Hare Vice-Chancellor’s Book Award in 2024. In 2025, he was awarded an NRF B-rating in recognition of his internationally acclaimed contributions to historical research. Roos acts as a co-implementer of the South African Department of Higher Education and Training’s national collaborative Future Professors Programme. He completed two terms as a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa Standing Committee on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Roos was a Fulbright Scholar during the 2006-2007 academic year.