Elizabeth Soer

Affiliate Researcher in the South-South Dialogues Program

Elizabeth Soer is a social scientist with a background in economic sociology, history and political economy. Her research interests include the role of imagined futures in capitalist dynamics, decolonial and postcolonial theory, and gender studies. She obtained her PhD in social science from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, where she also worked as a postdoctoral researcher. She previously worked as a researcher at the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender in Pretoria, South Africa, on the Just Gender project. She has a Masters degree in History and a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Political Science from the University of Pretoria. Throughout her Masters studies, she taught courses on Globalisation Studies, African History, and South African History.

Publications

Soer, E.F. 2020. New Chapters, Old Stories: The Developmental Narratives That Sustain Apartheid(s). CSA&G, Pretoria.
Soer, E. Forthcoming. ‘From Comrades to Capitalists: How South Africa’s Economic Future was (Re)Imagined’. Journal of Southern African Studies 51 (3).
Soer, E. 2025. ‘Neoliberalism’s True Heirs: What late-apartheid South Africa can teach us about the contemporary far-right’. MPIfG Discussion Papers 25/2.
Soer, E.F. 2020. ‘Sex, Drugs and COVID-19’. Occupational Health Southern Africa 26 (4), pp. 164-169.
Soer, E. 2025. ‘Through the Mirror World: South Africa and the Facts and Fictions of Genocide’. Review of Democracy.
Soer, E. 2025. ‘The Far-Right Fantasy of White Genocide: How South Africa Became a Symbol for the Global Right’, Review of Democracy