24/08/2026
Tributes have been paid to a distinguished St John’s researcher renowned for his life’s work in African history.
John Iliffe MA PhD LittD, Emeritus Professor of African History, and a Fellow of St John's College, wrote many notable books on Africa and specialised in Tanzania, where he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam for several years.
He became a Fellow of St John’s College in 1971, when he was appointed University Assistant Director of Research in History.
From 1980-90 he was Reader in African History and was Professor of African History from 1990 until his retirement in 2006. He was working on his latest research until recently and died on Thursday 20 August.
“African history owes John a staggering debt in his sheer curiosity, his extraordinary appetite for gruelling hard work, his courage in publishing in so many areas of others’ expertise, perhaps above all his intellectual capacity to lodge intimate human anxieties, hopes, obligations, determination and expectation in long spans of continental-wide change and continuity," said Professor John Lonsdale, Emeritus Professor of Modern African History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Professor Malcolm Schofield, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy, and a Fellow at St John’s, described Professor Iliffe as ‘a historian of great distinction’.
“John was a very private person, but in St John’s an unfailingly friendly and courteous presence among us, often with a twinkle in the eye."
