Rate My Professor Philip Nel

Philip Nel is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Otago, appointed on 1 July 2024 after a distinguished academic career spanning more than four decades. He obtained his BA with majors in Greek and Philosophy (1974), BA Honours in Philosophy cum laude (1976), MA in Philosophy cum laude (1978), and DPhil (1984), all from Stellenbosch University in South Africa. His professional journey commenced at Stellenbosch University, where he served as a researcher and part-time lecturer (1982-1989), progressed to Associate Professor (1989-1995) and Professor of Political Science (1995-2002), and held leadership roles including Chairperson of the Department of Political Science (1999-2002), Head of the Centre for International and Comparative Politics (1999-2002), and Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2000-2002). In 2003, he joined the University of Otago as Professor of Politics, a position he held until 2024, during which he was Head of the Department of Politics (2007-2010 and 2023-2024) and co-coordinator of the Division of Humanities Research Cluster on Poverty, Inequality, and Development (2005-2012). Concurrently, he has been Professor Extraordinaire at Stellenbosch University since 2003. He has also been a visiting professor in Germany, Japan, South Africa, and Vietnam.

Professor Nel's research specializations encompass the foreign relations of emerging powers of the Global South, comparative politics of inequality, ethics of global governance, psychology of inequality tolerance and redistribution preferences, religion and irreligion and their implications for democracy, and the perspectives of regional leaders in Africa. He has edited and contributed to numerous books, including Regional Powers and Global Redistribution (2015), The Politics of Inequality in Developing Countries (2008), In Full Flight: South African Foreign Policy since 1994 (2006), Power, Wealth and Global Equity: An International Relations Textbook for Africa (revised editions 1999, 2002, 2006), Democratizing Foreign Policy? Lessons from South Africa (2004), and South Africa’s Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change (2001). Recent peer-reviewed articles include Religion, Redistribution and Regimes in Asia and Africa, 2005–2022 (2026), Transnational Inequality and Geopolitics (2024), After Ian Taylor (2023), and The Limits of Mutual Benefit: A Neo-Mercantilist Perspective on China’s Economic Relations with Nigeria (2023). His scholarly impact is evidenced by supervising 30 PhD students, including 20 at Otago, and an A-grade in New Zealand's 2012 Performance-Based Research Funding assessment. Major awards include multiple Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships (1994, 2010, 2019), the first South African Japan Foundation Fellowship (1997), and DAAD Visiting Professorships at the University of Tübingen (2005, 2010).