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For the next three months, Prof Rick de Villiers will trade the lecture hall for a scholar's desk in Uppsala, chasing a question that has occupied him for years: Why do writers take back what they have said?

Between 1 September and 22 November, Prof De Villiers, Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of the Free State, will be a fellow-in-residence at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala, Sweden. The fellowship, made possible by special leave from the university, gives him uninterrupted time to work on his second monograph, provisionally titled Ctrl Z: Literary Experiments in Recantation.

Prof De Villiers is quick to credit those who made the opportunity possible. "I am very grateful to the University of the Free State for allowing me the time to take up this fellowship, to STIAS for facilitating my placement at SCAS, and to the Future Professors Programme for providing further financial assistance," he says.

A debt to STIAS

His route to Uppsala runs through Stellenbosch. Prof De Villiers is an Iso Lomso Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) from 2025 to 2027, and it is this fellowship that secured his placement at SCAS. Having already spent time as a fellow-in-residence at STIAS earlier this year, he knows what to expect. "From my past experience as a fellow-in-residence, I know that this will be a wonderfully stimulating experience," he explains. "You are given the time and space needed to tackle a big research project, and you get to meet stellar academics from all over the world. These encounters inevitably end up enriching your work and life."

Undoing things with words

At SCAS, Prof De Villiers will join around 30 fellows from a range of disciplines, sharing daily lunches and presenting seminars designed to encourage exchange across academic boundaries. He will deliver his own seminar, How to Undo Things with Words: A Literary History of Recantation, on 3 November, and has also been invited to present at the English departments of Stockholm University and Uppsala University.

The title captures the heart of his new book. Ctrl Z: Literary Experiments in Recantation examines why writers retract what they have written, identifying three recurring motives: self-preservation under oppressive regimes, humility in the face of new insight, and, paradoxically, self-promotion, in which an apparent act of cancellation draws fresh attention to the work it disowns. The monograph sets out to account for these motives in a climate where both free speech and humility are in short supply.

Family, and a novel, along for the ride

Prof De Villiers will be accompanied by his family. "I am also very excited that I get to share the experience with my family," he adds.

The timing marks a second milestone. On 12 October, with Prof De Villiers still in Sweden, his first novel, Blot, will be published in South Africa and the United Kingdom. Launches in Sweden will be followed by stops in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, and Bloemfontein, where the launch will take place at the Naval Hill Planetarium on 26 November.

For the University of the Free State, Prof De Villiers' fellowship reflects the kind of sustained, ambitious scholarship that the institution seeks to nurture, and its commitment to positioning its researchers within the world's most rigorous intellectual communities.