Schalk Daniël van der Merwe is an interdisciplinary historian and Extraordinary Senior Lecturer at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI), Stellenbosch University. His research focuses on South African social history, with particular attention to popular music and identity, and the cultural implications of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in African contexts. His work is informed by sustained engagement with questions of race, language, class, and belonging in postcolonial societies.

He has more than two decades of experience teaching African and South African history, postcolonial studies, and popular culture, including a Visiting Professorship at the Venice International University Summer School (2022–2024). In 2026, he will serve as South Africa Chair: Languages, Literature, Culture and Society at the Centre for Afrikaans, Ghent University.

Schalk’s research combines archival, oral-historical, and cultural-analytical approaches and is complemented by ongoing public engagement, including contributions to several historical documentary projects. Alongside his academic work, he has maintained a long-standing professional career as a session bassist and is credited on more than sixty albums. This musical practice functions as an epistemic dimension of his research, providing embodied insight into the production, circulation, and social life of popular music. His current work seeks to integrate scholarly analysis and musical practice in comparative African contexts.

Books

• On Record: Popular Afrikaans Music and Society 1900-2017. Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, 2017 (Translated into Afrikaans in 2019).

Book Chapters

• “‘This Land Is Still Our Land’: Sounding Right-Wing Populism in Afrikaner Song’ In Palermo, F. and Nadav, A., (eds). Listening to the Rising Right: Populist Rebels, Fascist Countercultures, and the Global Sounds of Right-Wing Music, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming in 2026).

• “Afrikaans Music is not Afrikaans: Race, Language, and Identity in Churchil Naudé’s album, Kroesifaaid,” In G. Schott (Ed.) The language of music: Minority languages in popular music, 96-105, (London: Routledge, 2025).

• “Fokofpolisiekar’s Afrikaans Punk in the Postcolony” in Trans-Global Punk Scenes: The Punk Reader Vol. 2 (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2021).

• “The History and Heritage of Popular Afrikaans Music” in Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (London: Routledge, 2018).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• “New currents, old boundaries: Exploring the relationship between streaming platforms and Afrikaans music”, Africa, forthcoming (2026).

• Lambrechts, L., & Van der Merwe, S.D. “Ghosts of the Popular: Theoretical and Historiographical Perspectives from the Hidden Years Music Archive” in Journal of Popular Culture Special Issue: Archives and Popular Culture, Vol. 53:6, December 2020.

• “Kruger’s lost voice: Nation and race in pre-World War1 Afrikaans music records”, Historia, 6:1, May 2015.

• “‘Radio Apartheid’: Investigating a History of Compliance and Resistance in Popular Afrikaans Music, 1956–1979”, South African Historical Journal, Vol. 66: 2, 2014.

Peer-Reviewed Creative Outputs

• Eet Kreef Herleef!, 2022, Documentary, album and award-winning music theatre production that re-imagined the iconic 1989 anti-apartheid music album, ‘Eet kreef’.