Franco Barchiesi, associate professor, Department of African American and African Studies, has won the 2012 CLR James Award from the Working Class Studies Association (WSCA), for his book, Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011).

Barchiesi's research interests are in the study of African labor movements, with particular regard to Southern Africa, in relation to changing forms of employment, collective identities, civil society, social movements, social policy, and social citizenship. On these issues, he has recently edited a book, Rethinking the Labour Movement in the 'New South Africa (London: Ashgate, 2003).