Rate My Professor Stephen Tollman

Professor Stephen Tollman is a Research Professor and Head of the Health and Population Division in the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand. He serves as Director of the South African Medical Research Council/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), a position he has held since 2004. Tollman founded the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System in rural Mpumalanga, South Africa, which has grown into a leading platform for multidisciplinary research on population health, demographic dynamics, and health transitions across the life course in sub-Saharan Africa. His academic qualifications include a BSc and MBBCh from the University of the Witwatersrand, an MMed in Public Health Medicine from Wits, an MPH from Harvard University, an MA from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a PhD in Epidemiology and Global Health from Umeå University in Sweden.

Tollman has held numerous leadership roles, including as the first elected Chair of the Board of Trustees of the INDEPTH Network and as Principal Scientist for the network. He maintains guest professorships and faculty affiliations with institutions such as Umeå University and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. His contributions have been recognized with awards including the 2023 Alumni Award of Merit from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, INDEPTH Prizes for Extraordinary Research in Population and Health, the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Academic Citizenship at Wits, and earlier honors such as a Wellcome Trust Travelling Research Fellowship. Tollman has served on editorial boards for journals including Global Health, Epidemiology and Genomics, Social Science and Medicine, and Population Health Metrics, and on advisory committees for organizations such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Academy of Sciences. His work has advanced understanding of mortality transitions, chronic disease prevention, ageing, and health systems in resource-limited settings through extensive collaborative research and capacity building across Africa.