Rick de Villiers is an associate professor in the Department of English, University of the Free State. Alongside his SCAS fellowship, he currently holds an Iso Lomso Fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). He is the author of Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation External link, opens in new window. (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), which was favourably reviewed and shortlisted for the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) book prize in 2023. He has written widely External link, opens in new window. on modernism, contemporary fiction, and the intersection between literature and philosophy. At SCAS he will be finalising his next monograph, Ctrl Z: Narratives of Undoing, which considers the motives and methods behind recantation. His debut novel, Blot External link, opens in new window., will be out in October.

Rick de Villiers lives in Bloemfontein, South Africa, with his wife Michelle and their two children, Daniel and Emily. They will all be accompanying him to Uppsala.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2026-27.