David Coplan

COPLAN, David. (19**-) Academic, author and musician. *** Born in the USA, has an MA (1976) and a Ph.D. in Anthropology (1980/1) from Indiana University. He has carried out fieldwork in Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa, Ghana, and the United States. Since 1998*? Professor and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has also held visiting appointments at institutions as diverse as University of Basel, École des Hautes Études Sciences Sociales (Paris), Rice University, NYU, DePauw University, and the University of Cape Town. He acted as the Chief Researcher for the “Mobilising Culture and Heritage for Nation Building” in South Africa’s Arts and Culture Department and worked as an ethnographic research consultant for University of Pennsylvania Museum and International Library of African Music. Has received awards and grants from Fulbright-Hayes, SSRC, NEH, ACLS, Human Sciences Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Arts Council of South Africa, and the Ernst Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. Author of In Township Tonight ! (, a seminal ethnomusicological work and the first comprehensive study of South African black performance. Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association, In Township Tonight ! is currently in its second edition. Coplan is also the author of In the Time of Cannibals: Word Music of South Africa's Basotho Migrants, and editor of Lyrics of the Basotho Migrants.

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