Rate My Professor Nick Shepherd

Nick Shepherd is Associate Professor of Sustainable Heritage Management in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, a position he has held since 2017. He concurrently serves as Extraordinary Professor of Heritage and Museum Studies at the University of Pretoria. Trained as an archaeologist, Shepherd obtained his PhD in Archaeology from the University of Cape Town in 1998, focusing on Archaeology and Postcolonialism in South Africa. He also holds a BA Honours from the University of Cape Town in 1989 and a BA in Archaeology and English Literature in 1988, both with distinction. His career trajectory includes prominent roles at the University of Cape Town, such as Associate Professor of Public Culture and Heritage Studies from 2009 to 2017, where he convened the graduate programme on Public Culture and Heritage in Africa, Acting Director of the Centre for African Studies from 2012 to 2015, Senior Lecturer and Lecturer from 2000 to 2008, and earlier positions. Internationally, he was Mandela Fellow at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute from 2004 to 2006, Visiting Associate Professor at Brown University in 2008 and the University of Basel in 2009, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University from 2015 to 2016, and Artist-in-Residence at the Reinwardt Academie, Amsterdam University of the Arts, from 2017 to 2018.

Shepherd's academic interests lie at the intersection of postcolonial archaeology, critical heritage studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, African studies, visual studies, and decolonial thinking, emphasizing social justice in the legacies of colonialism, apartheid, climate emergency, and Anthropocene landscapes. He has produced influential publications, including the authored book "The Mirror in the Ground: Archaeology, photography and the making of a disciplinary archive" (2015, Jonathan Ball Publishers), edited volumes such as "Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times: Coloniality, Climate Change and COVID-19" (2023, Routledge), "Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes" (2020, Oxford University Press), and "After Ethics: Ancestral voices and postdisciplinary worlds in archaeology" (2014, Springer). Key articles encompass "Heading South, Looking North: Why we need a postcolonial archaeology" (2002, Archaeological Dialogues) and "Disciplining Archaeology: The Invention of South African Prehistory, 1923-1953" (2002, Kronos). As Principal Investigator, he has led funded projects like Heritage and the Anthropocene (Aarhus University Research Foundation, DKK 2.5 million, 2018-2022), The Politics and Poetics of Water in the Anthropocene (Danish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, 2019-2023), and contributed to the Hidden Plant Stories project (Velux Foundation, DKK 4.5 million, 2023-current). Shepherd organizes walking seminars involving scholars, artists, and policymakers since 2014 and co-authored the ICOMOS-UNESCO-IPCC White Paper on The Role of Cultural and Natural Heritage for Climate Action (2022), underscoring his impact on decolonial heritage practices and climate discourse.