- Assistant Professor, Queens College, CUNY
I'm an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and I also serve as a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. My primary area of interest is sub-Saharan Africa, with an active research program that focuses on understanding the social formations of the Zimbabwe culture and other Iron Age cultures that thrived in southern Africa over the past two millennia. My scholarship addresses a wide range of topics, including the anthropology of technology, materiality, early state formation, and human adaptation and resilience in archaeological contexts. I also engage deeply with questions of decoloniality, conceptual revision, and the politics of knowledge production. Furthermore, my work explores Africa’s contributions to other world civilizations through trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean networks, challenging earlier archaeological narratives that portrayed precolonial Africa as isolated and underdeveloped.
Experience
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2023–presentResearch Associate, University of Johannesburg
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2023–presentAssistant Professor, Queens College, CUNY
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2025–presentAssistant Professor, Graduate Center, CUNY
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2021–2023Lecturer, University of Cape Town
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2016–2023Assistant Lecturer, University of Cape Town
Education
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2021University of Cape Town, PhD/ Archaeology
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2017University of Cape Town, MPhil/ Archaeology
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2013Midlands State University, BA Hons/ Archaeology, Cultural Heritage & Museum Studies
Professional Memberships
- Society of American Archaeology
- Society of Africanist Archaeologists
Contact Robert for
- General
- Media request
- Speaking request
- Consulting / Advising
- Research collaboration
- Research supervision
