Neil Parsons is a freelance author and researcher, with particular interest in Southern African historical biography and general history, as well as early cinema and popular entertainment. He was professor of history at the University of Botswana from 1996 to 2009, and has also taught and researched at universities in Zambia, Swaziland, South Africa, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.
He has contributed to numerous journals and periodicals over the years, and has co-authored an authoritative biography of Seretse Khama. Other published works include the study of 1895 British imperialism King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen, the circus biography Clicko, the Wild Dancing Bushman, and, with Alois Mlambo, A History of Southern Africa.
In his most recent work, Black and White Bioscope, Neil has rescued a neglected chapter in the history of world cinema, and reveals a ‘lost moment’ of South African multiculturalism at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A History of Southern Africa
co-written with Alois S. Mlambo, publ. Macmillan International Higher Education and Red Globe Press, 2019
Black and White Bioscope
Making Movies in Africa 1899 to 1925, publ. Intellect Books 2018, ISBN 9781783209439
Clicko, the Wild Dancing Bushman
publ. University of Chicago Press, 2010
King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen
Victorian Britain through African Eyes, publ. University of Chicago Press 1998
Seretse Khama, 1921 - 1980
Biography publ. Botswana Society & Macmillan, 1995
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