Lauren Jarvis

Lauren Jarvis is an Associate Professor of History, with an adjunct appointment in African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jarvis studies the history of South Africa, with special interest in how people lived through and with extreme economic inequality. Her first book, A Prophet of the People (MSUP 2024), explored religious change in South Africa during the country’s industrial revolution. Jarvis is also an editor of a forthcoming volume entitled Agency in African History (Ohio University Press) and is completing a book about the global history of anti-apartheid, geared toward non-specialist audiences. Jarvis’s new research explores how South Africans have influenced international debates about economic inequality. At UNC, Jarvis teaches courses in South African, African, and world history. She serves as the faculty director of the Lab at UNC History (the LAUNCH), a digital humanities lab, and on the editorial boards of the journals Church History and Safundi. Jarvis’s practice explaining the values of a liberal education began decades ago, when she told her supportive, but skeptical family that she planned to study history. Their blue-collar sensibilities shaped her commitment to sharing those values widely – and to fostering them inside and outside of academia.