About Us

The Southern African Historical Society is an active network for communication among professional historians and those in cognate disciplines located throughout the subcontinental region and the organisational home for the accredited South African Historical Journal.

The Society was founded in Bloemfontein on 5 February 1965 to promote the interests of professional historians through ‘encouraging and effecting professional communication and unity’ among them. This was to be accomplished by arranging regular conferences at which papers would be read and by publishing a high quality journal in which to disseminate ‘papers and other material in connection with South African historiography and scientific studies of history’. Active historians at universities were the target membership but others working outside the academy, in archives for instance, were welcomed.

The principal objectives of the founders have been adhered to over the years. Renamed the Southern African Historical Society in 2005 and thus representing the entire subcontinent, the Society keeps members in touch with one another. Since 1967 the Society has held biennial conferences that have served as regular benchmarks for the quality and scope of academic historical scholarship in the region. The South African Historical Journal has appeared regularly since 1969 and it has become a permanent record of developments in professional southern African historiography.