Scholarship & Projects
My research focuses on the United States, southern Africa, and the global movement against apartheid, and cuts across questions of foreign policy, labor and the workplace, and social movements.
Book
Shopfloor Statecraft: South African Workers & U.S. Multinational Companies During Apartheid (forthcoming, under contract with Columbia University Press)
My book project, Shopfloor Statecraft: South African Workers & U.S. Multinational Companies During Apartheid, presents a new social and political history of the anti-apartheid movement, placing South African workers at the center of global narratives of labor and empire in international relations. Based on an examination of extensive self-conducted oral histories and multilingual archival materials from the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa, Shopfloor Statecraft probes the intersection of U.S. corporate governance and global labor movements in the late apartheid era. It challenges existing late-Cold War narratives of a weakened South African-led anti-apartheid movement and a decline in trade union strength on a global scale.
Recent Scholarship & Awards
Refereed Journals
“‘An Exercise in the Art of the Possible’: Waging a Battle Against Apartheid in the South African Workplace,” Enterprise & Society, 25, no. 2, May 2024, doi:10.1017/eso.2023.20.
The Wiehahn Commission, a 1979 internal South African labor reform, accelerated the corporate recognition of Black trade unions, complementing international workplace codes and the burgeoning push for ethically-sound business practices in apartheid South Africa. While U.S. subsidiaries in South Africa did not initially voice support for Black trade unions, many were faced with cascading internal and external pressures to negotiate with these emerging unions. By incorporating the Sullivan Principles, a U.S. code for ethical business conduct, into the broader scholarship on the South African trade union movement, this chapter examines how corporate reforms landed in South Africa, probing the corporate response to worker demands. South African workers were not passive recipients of workplace reform, but rather active participants, shaping the form and direction of U.S. and South African policy.
“People Before Profit? Ford, General Motors & the Spirit of the Sullivan Principles in Apartheid South Africa (1976-84),” Ethnic Studies Review, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of California Press, December 2021, http://doi.org/10.1525/esr.2021.44.3.64
Focusing on the automobile industry in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, this article demonstrates how Ford Motor Company and General Motors challenged apartheid through adherence to the Sullivan Principles, while maintaining cordial relations with the capitalist South African government in the late apartheid period. Designed to promote desegregation of the workplace and equal pay for equal work, the Sullivan Principles were a controversial code of conduct for U.S. subsidiaries operating in apartheid South Africa. Leon Sullivan, an African American civil rights leader, unveiled the Principles in March 1977 with the support of U.S. multinationals, including both Ford and GM. Drawing on archival sources from both the United States and South Africa, I trace how these American multinational corporations did not sufficiently allay their workers’ most pressing concerns, nor did they firmly challenge the South African government. The Principles’ shortcomings underscore the disconnect between the anti-apartheid movement’s calls for revolutionary transformation and the American business community’s focus on evolutionary change, thus highlighting the tensions between international capital and South Africa’s racialized labor relations.
Short Academic Articles
Review of Elisabeth Leake, "The Decolonization Paradigm: Rethinking the US and the World," Diplomatic History 49, no. 4 (2025): 501-523, H-Diplo, May 28, 2026.
"Diplomacy at Work: The South African Worker, U.S. Multinationals & Transnational Racial Solidarity," Enterprise & Society, December 2025.
"30 Years of Democracy: 1994-2024 Roundtable," South African Historical Journal, October 2025 (co-authors: Laura Phillips, Anne-Maria Makhulu, Athambile Masola & Goolam Vahed).
"The Fall of Apartheid in South Africa," Case Study for use in Yale University's Grand Strategy course, January 2025.
“Networks Against Apartheid: The American Committee on Africa and the Trade Union Movement,” American Committee on Africa: Liberation Movements, Solidarity, and Activism Archives Project, Amistad Research Center, Adam Matthew Digital, published in the Fall of 2024.
Review of Jessica Chapman, Remaking the World: Decolonization & the Cold War (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2023), H-Diplo, April 29, 2024.
“Research Note: Mayibuye Archives & the Cold War in Southern Africa,” Cold War History, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Cambridge University Press, published June 2022, DOI: 10.1080/14682745.2022.2076347.
.
Public-Facing Articles
"Afrikaner Refugees and the Limits of U.S. Pressure on South Africa," Lawfare, July 6, 2026.
"The Distance Between," Africa is a Country, June 17, 2026.
"Could FIFA World Cup Reduce U.S.-South African Tensions?" The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 11, 2026.
"US Worker Movements & Direct Links Against Apartheid," Black Perspectives, April 26, 2024. *Part of a forum on global anti-apartheid commemorating South Africa's first democratic elections.
"A Postcard from Detroit," Contingent Magazine, November 22, 2022.
"Black Internationalism and a Wide View of Leon Sullivan's Work," Scholar Blog, Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, November 1, 2022.
"Companies Have Long Brandished Socially Responsible Images While Busting Unions," The Washington Post, 4 March 2022.
“Beyond Desegregation: Waging a Battle Against Apartheid in the South African Workplace,” Scottish Centre for Global History, December 2020.
“Corporates and Investors Need to Engage with the US to Halt its Slide into Autocratization,” Responsible Investor, October 2020 (co-authored with Dr. Raj Thamotheram)
“The Sullivan Principles at Work: The Conflicted Activism of Rev. Leon Howard Sullivan,” Scholar Blog, Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, August 7, 2019
Media Appearances
"Boycotting Chevron for Fueling Genocide," Yes Magazine, quoted in March 3, 2025 article.
“The Problem with Boycotting Israel,” The Atlantic, quoted in November 20, 2024 article.
“South Africa’s Calming Civility,” The Christian Science Monitor, quoted in July 3, 2024 article.
“Student Protestors Have a Long History of Demanding Financial Divestment,” National Public Radio (NPR) Marketplace Morning Report, April 30, 2024 (brief interview).
“Black Worker Internationalism and Union Struggles Against Apartheid in American Multi-Nationals,” NALSU Labour Studies Podcast, 50-minute discussion.
“The United States Anti-Apartheid Movement: Bonus Episode,” Scottish Centre for Global History, Episode 4, 50-minute interview with Dr. Chris Fevre and Dr. Matt Graham, January 2021.
Select Awards & Grants
Sam Fishman Research Travel Grant, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University
Herman E. Krooss Dissertation Prize Finalist, Business History Conference (BHC)
William Appleman Williams Emerging Scholar Research Grant, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Jefferson Scholars National Fellowship (declined)
Marilyn Blatt Young Fellowship: Honorable Mention, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (pictured left)
Fulbright Fellowship (South Africa)
National Security Education Program David L. Boren Fellowship (South Africa)
Steve & Barbara Mendell Graduate Fellowship in Cultural Literacy, Walter Capps Center
Robert O. Collins Prize for Best First Publication, UCSB History Department
Elings-Wells Dissertation Fellowship, UCSB Graduate Division
Find me on Academia, Google Scholar, Research Gate, and my Yale Visiting Scholars page.