Gavin Williams studied at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Oxford. He has held posts at the Universities of Durham and Sussex and, since 1975, has been a Fellow of St Peters College, Oxford. Since 1990 he has held a Jill Nattrass fellowship at the University of Natal and a WJ Wilson fellowship at Rhodes University and has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Stellenbosch and the Witwatersrand. Gavin Williams has published widely on the politics and political economy of Nigeria, and on land and agricultural policies in Africa. He is currently collaborating with colleagues in Montpellier and Stellenbosch on a collaborative study of the wine industries of the Languedoc and the Western Cape. He is also writing an economic history of the wine industry in South Africa in the 20th century.