Richard Levi Raber

Postdoctoral Fellow

I am a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology researching the Cold War and decolonization in southern Africa. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Exeter. I hold a Ph.D in African History from Indiana University where my PhD dissertation was recognized as winner of the 2025 Indiana University Graduate School Distinguished Ph.D. Dissertation Award (Humanities and Fine Arts category). My current book project, Martial Production: The Making and Memory of a Military Community focuses on the veterans and families of the former South African Defence Force 31 Battalion. I trace how war, displacement, and militarization produced a contemporary southern African community, how the onset of peace and democracy disrupted this social order, and how this fallout has both fostered generational conflict and shaped cultural memory. This project draws on 102 oral history interviews, consultation of over a dozen archives across Africa and Europe, visual cultural analysis, and ethnographic observation. In support of this research, I received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award, a Social Science Research Council Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship supporting research in both South Africa and Namibia, as well as multiple Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships. I have also published on the South African Defence Force 32 Battalion community with whom I conducted 46 interviews.

My work has been featured in The Journal of African History, Third Text, Cold War History, Journal of Southern African Studies, Africa Today, Genealogy, and Left History. I am Associate Editor of the Southern Journal for Contemporary History, a journal for post-1945 African history hosted by the Faculty of Humanities at University of the Free State, South Africa. I hold a wide number of longstanding affiliations including with Khulumani Support Group, the Khwedam Development Organisation, the McGregor Museum, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Free State. I can be found on Twitter @BushWarHistory.