Prof Fraser McNeill

Position: Associate Professor
Academic / Support: Academic Department
Faculty/Department: Humanities
Campus: Hatfield Campus
Building: Humanities
Office Number: 8-11

Contact: (012) 420-3111
 
Qualifications:

PhD (Social Anthropology). London School of Economics and Political Science. 2007.
MSc (Social Anthropology, with Distinction). London School of Economics and Political Science. 2003.
MA (magna cum laude) (Social Anthropology and Sociology). The University of Glasgow. 2001.

Academic profile:
I am a social anthropologist who has been conducting ethnographic research in the Venda region of
South Africa for almost 20 years. My primary research interests are medical anthropology, politics of
traditional leadership, ethnomusicology, poisoning and the relationship between knowledge and
experience.
 
My doctoral thesis, awarded by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2007,
examined the relationship between music, medicine and traditional leadership in the Venda region
and was published by Cambridge University Press as a monograph in the International African
Library series as AIDS, Politics and Music in South Africa. My more recent research interests have
included ethnographic accounts of COVID infection through the lens of anthropological theory. I am
currently writing the biography of a musical family in Venda and outside of academia I play guitar
and sing in a reggae band.
 
 
Course involvement:

I have been awarded several prizes for lecturing in the UK and in South Africa. I currently teach the
Introduction to Social Anthropology module (APL 110) to around 500 first year students and the
Research Methods (APL 755) course in the first semester to the anthropology Honours students.

Postgraduate Supervision:
As of 2023, I have successfully supervised 8 PhD candidates to completion. I am interested in
supervising postgraduate projects with students who are critical thinkers on a wide range of topics
and do not limit my PhD supervision to my own areas of expertise. These have covered a broad
spectrum of fascinating projects, from the symbolism and politics of adire tie-dying in Nigeria to a
homosexual Pentecostal church congregation in Pretoria, South Africa. 
 
Publications:

A full list of publications can be accessed through my Orcid profile:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0863-8856


You can access to some of my recent and older publications here:


Covid-19 infection as ritual process in Venda, South Africa. (2023). Anthropology Southern Africa: 46-3: 1–14.

The birth of Boererate: women and healing during the South African war. (2023, with Blackbeard, J.)
Anthropology Southern Africa, 46:1, 7-20.

“Original Venda hustler”: symbols, generational difference and the construction of ethnicity in post-
apartheid South Africa, Anthropology Southern Africa. (2016). 39:3, 187-203

 

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