Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town and an Honorary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch, Professor Ari Sitas is a social scientist as well as a poet, dramatist and, in recent years, has been involved in musical work. He received his PhD in 1984 from the University of the Witwatersrand under the supervision of Edward and David Webster. He rose through the ranks of his discipline at the University of Natal (later University of KwaZulu-Natal) and served as Chair of Industrial and General Sociology; Dean of Social Science; and Head of the School of Sociology and Social Studies. He served as President of the Sociological Association (1995-7) and Vice-President for Programmes of the international Sociological Association (2002-6). He joined the University of Cape Town in 2010 as a Professor and, subsequently, Head until 2019.

He has held various guest positions at the University of California, Berkeley; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Paris University (Descartes); and Albert-Ludvigs University in Freiburg. He was the principal author of the Charter for the Future of the Humanities and the Social Sciences; the Chair of the National Institute for the Humanities and the Social Sciences; and Chair of the South African BRICS Think Tank during his tenure from 2015 to 2019.

He was the recipient of the Order of Mapungubwe in Silver for his social scientific, policy and creative work in 2019 and served on the Scientific Committee for UNESCO’s World Humanities Report from 2022 to 2024; the Panel for the Future of the Science, Technology and Innovation Framework in South Africa (HESTILL) from 2019 to 2020; and was recently (2019-2023) a titular Gutenberg Chair at the University of Strasbourg.