Lazlo Passemiers received his Bachelor of Arts, Honours in History, and Masters in History from Stellenbosch University, and his PhD in Africa Studies from the University of the Free State. His research interests lie in the transnational histories of Southern Africa’s decolonisation. While South Africa remains at the centre of most of Lazlo’s research, its scope extends to neighbouring Anglophone and Lusophone Africa, as well as Francophone countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is particularly fascinated by the former support networks of Southern African liberation movements and the relations that existed between the region’s white minority governments and societies. In 2019, Lazlo published his first monograph titled Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics: South Africa and the ‘Congo Crisis’, 1960-1965, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Humanities Book Prize. He is currently researching the exile relations of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the Comité Revolucionário de Moçambique (COREMO). Lazlo is also working on a new research project provisionally titled “Uhuru Hoppers: Decolonisation and White Flight in Southern Africa, 1960-1994.”  Lazlo also serves as Associated Editor for the Southern Journal for Contemporary History.

Books

Decolonisation and Regional Geopolitics: South Africa and the `Congo Crisis`. 1960-1965. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Book Chapters

“‘Our Country or Death’: Reconstructing the Mozambique Revolutionary Committee’s (Coremo) political ideology through its public discourse”. In Lopes, Rui, and Natalia Telepneva, eds. Globalizing Independence Struggles of Lusophone Africa: Anticolonial and Postcolonial Politics, 41-62. London: Zed Books, 2024.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

"`Primarily, I want to be an instrument of change`: Nana Mahomo’s Contribution to the Anti-Apartheid Struggle." Historia, 69, 2 (2024): 65-98.

"Mozambique’s Neglected Nationalists in Exile: Retracing Coremo’s Relations with the Congolese Government and the FNLA." Journal of Southern African Studies, 49, no. 5-6 (2023): 861-887.

“Apartheid South Africa’s Reaction to Congo’s White Refuge-Seekers." 1960-1961.” Africa Today, 69, no. 1&2 (2022): 36-61.

“The Pan Africanist Congress and the Congo Alliance, 1963-1964.” South African Historical Journal, 70, no. 1 (2018): 82-107.

“Safe-Guarding White Minority Power in Southern Africa Through External Coercion: The South African Government and the Secession of Katanga, 1960-1963.” South African Historical Journal, 68, no. 1 (2016): 70-91.

Non-Peer Reviewed Publications

"Conducting Research on Statistical Publications in Southern Africa." Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 73, no. 2 (2019): 221-230.

Book Reviews

Safundi (2024). "Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries", By Paul Landau, (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2022).

Historia, 68, no. 2 (2023). “Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo” By Pedro Monaville (Cornell University Press: Durham and London, 2022).

South African Historical Journal, 74, no. 4 (2022). Laura Phillips, Suryakanthie Chetty, Lazlo Passemiers, Abraham Mlombo and Rebecca Swartz, “Round Table: Teaching Texts.”

Southern Journal for Contemporary History, 44, no. 1 (2019). "Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and the decolonisation of Africa" By Henning Melber (London: Hurst, 2019).

African Historical Review, 47, no 1, 2015. "The Hidden Threat, Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era" By Irena Filatova & Appolon Davidson (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2013).

African Historical Review, 46, no. 1, 2014. "Battleground Africa: Cold War in the Congo 1960-1965" By Lise Namikas (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013).