Robert Carl-Heinz Shell is a renowned South African author and professor of African Studies. He was born (1949) in the Cape Province of South Africa. He currently lives in the Western Cape with his wife Sandy Rowoldt Shell who is the head of the African Studies Library at University of Cape Town.
Professor Shell has attended more than 41 international workshops where he has delivered papers on several topics but notably on Slavery, Islam and HIV/AIDS. In September 2004 he delivered the keynote address at the AGM of SANTA (SA National Tuberculosis Association) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa with a talk entitled “Infectious diseases in South Africa: HIV/AIDS and TB, some statistical trends”. He has also appeared on in Washington, D.C., where he addressed both the House Select Committee on African affairs and the House Select Committee on International Relations on the global Aids pandemic.
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Professor Shell obtained his undergraduate and Honours degrees at University of Cape Town in the 1970s. He then went to the U.S. to complete his Masters degree at University of Rochester and in 1986 he completed his PhD at Yale University. For his doctoral studies at Yale, completed in 1986, Shell wrote the dissertation entitled “Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1680-1731” under the advisorship of famed South African historian, Leonard M. Thompson[1]
| 2006-2007: Extraordinary Professor of Historical demography in the UWC Statistics Department. |
| 2001-2005: UWC Associate Professor of Statistics |
| 1996-2001: Rhodes University, East London Division, Senior Lecturer |
| 1988-95: Princeton University History Department, Assistant Professor of African History |
| 1988: Oswego, SUNY, Visiting Professor of African History |
| 1986/87: University of California, Santa Barbara: Visiting Lecturer, African History |
| 1983/84: Yale University Teaching Fellowship for expository writing; colonial America |
| 1981: Yale University: South African History (assistant for Prof L M Thompson) |
| 1976/77: East Asian Economic and Demographic History (Prof. Robert Hall) |
| 2003-: Nelson Mandela Chair of African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (6 months) |
| 2003-: Vice President, Demographic Association of Southern Africa (DEMSA) |
| 2001-: Assoc. Prof of Statistics, University of Western Cape |
| 1998-1999: Councillor of Demographic Association of South Africa (DEMSA) |
| 1997-2000: Director of Population Research Unit, Rhodes University (EL) |
| 1996: Lecturer-in-charge: History Department, Rhodes University (EL) |
| 1989-93: Director of African Studies, Princeton University |
| 1991/2: Executive Secretary, Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University |
| 1989/90: Committee member on Academic Initiatives on South Africa |
| 1989/90: Committee member on Southern Colonialist Search |
| 1989/90: Executive Committee Member, Shelby Cullom Davis Center |
"Robert Shell's account is slightly different. He argues that Christianity's change of heart only applied to baptized slaves, and the issue of whether slaves should be baptized was very contentious as late as 1618 when it was raised at the Synod of Dort, the last meeting of Protestant theologians from Great Britain and the Continent. Although the delegates could not agree on a single policy, Shell maintains, their writings ended or limited the trade in Christian slaves.[18]