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ABOUT LEAP

Stellenbosch University has a proud record of Economic History teaching and research. Prof. Sampie Terreblanche, appointed Professor of Economic History in 1968, will be remembered for his fearlessness in speaking truth to power, a public intellectual who constantly reminded apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa of the injustice inherent in economic inequality. The Department of Economics now honours Sampie, as he was widely known, with a dedicated website and repository of his written work.

The global renaissance of African economic history since the early 2000s has spurred a new generation of Stellenbosch economists to carry on the work of Prof. Terreblanche. Instrumental in this was the hosting of the 2012 World Economic History Congress. The Congress, held during a cold July, attracted more than 800 international scholars and positioned Stellenbosch as one of the leading centres of economic history on the African continent. Following the Congress, plans were made to formalise the Economic History group at Stellenbosch University, with the aim of expanding and improving quantitative African economic history research. LEAP became a formal Type 1-centre within the Department of Economics in 2023.

Success depended on recruiting high-potential students and exposing them to the leading thinkers in African economic history and economic and social history more generally.

The Department of Economics now teach an undergraduate and graduate Economic History course annually. To build the essential collaborative networks across Europe, North America and Africa, the department has appointed five Research Associates and one Extraordinary Professor in Economic History, Jan Luiten van Zanden, Professor of Economic History at Utrecht University. The economic history cluster, consisting of staff and students interested in African economic history, has met weekly since 2014 for a brown-bag seminar. The cluster was formalised at the beginning of 2015 when LEAP was launched.

In the last five years, LEAP has grown from a handful of students to a group of more than 25 students, postdocs and faculty. 

Economic History is now taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The undergraduate course was turned into a commercially successful book, Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom, published by Tafelberg in 2021 and Cambridge University Press in 2022, reaching markets far beyond the classroom. Graduate students have been successfully placed within PhD programmes in the UK (Warwick), Germany (Tubingen) and Sweden (Lund). Several have also completed their PhDs within LEAP.

International collaborative partnerships are key to leveraging world-class research.

To build networks across Europe, North America and Africa, the department has appointed several Research Associates and one Extraordinary Professor in Economic History, Jan Luiten van Zanden, Professor of Economic History at Utrecht University. Between 2018 and 2022, the Biography of an Uncharted People project, generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has facilitated greater interaction with the History department at Stellenbosch University. The scope of work has expanded beyond economic history, to also include social, demographic, financial and family history.

Since 2021, LEAP researchers have been involved in the Cape of Good Hope Panel project, one of the largest social science projects in Sweden. Thanks to a generous grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, the purpose of this project is to transcribe the full series of tax censuses and match households across censuses. This would allow us to investigate questions about the evolution of living standards and economic development, inequality and social mobility, networks and elite formation and slavery and labour coercion.

LEAP has identified five traits that characterise our work:

Creativity
Courage
Credibility
Collaboration
Compassion

With these exciting developments going on, the future of quantitative African economic and social history research looks promising.

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