Francis Wilson

Professor Francis Wilson has taught for over thirty years in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town where he founded & for many years directed the Southern African Labour & Development Research Unit (Saldru). Since 2001 he has been the Director of Data First Resource Unit (For Information Research and Scientific Training) in the Centre for Social Science Research.

He is the author of a number of books, chapters, and articles including Labour in the South African Gold Mines (Cambridge, 1972) and, with Mamphela Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge (Cape Town &New York, 1989). He is co-editor of Poverty Reduction: What Role for the State in Today's Globalised Economy? (London, 2001)

More recent articles include essays on:

Globalization: A view from the south, in Charles V. Hamilton, Lynn Huntley, Neville Alexander, ASA Guimaraes and Wilmot James (eds.), Beyond Racism, pp. 323-350, a book dealing with racism in the United States, Brazil & South Africa;

Minerals & Migrants: How the Mining Industry has Shaped South Africa for a special issue of Daedalus (Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Winter 2001, vol 130, no. 1, pp.99-121);

Employment, Education and the Economy in John Kane-Berman (ed) South Africa Survey 2001/2002, (South African Institute of Race Relations, Johannesburg 2001, pp.3-32)

Understanding the Past to Reshape the Future: Problems of South Africa's Transition, in Paul A. David and Mark Thomas (eds.), The Economic Future in Historical Perspective, OUP for the British Academy, Oxford, 2003 pp. 297-313

Anglican Reflections from a South African Economist in Dominique Peccoud (ed.) Philosophical and Spiritual Perspectives on Decent Work, International Labour Office , Geneva, 2004 pp.51-53

He was Chairperson of Council at the University of Fort Hare from 1990-1999 and also first Chairperson, 1996-1999, of the National Water Advisory Council. During part of 2000, 2001 and 2002 he was Visiting Professor in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2001 he became Chairperson of the International Social Science Council's Scientific Committee of CROP, the international Comparative Research Program on Poverty. He is married to Lindy Wilson, a filmmaker, and they have three children.

For more information, view Professor Wilson's pages at the Data First resource unit's  web site.