Robin Cohen

South African sociologist Robin Cohen (born 1944) is a social scientist working in the fields of globalisation, migration and diaspora studies. He is emeritus Professor of Development Studies and former Director of the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford. Career Robin Cohen was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He left in 1964, returning to the country for three years in the post-Mandela period, when he served as Dean of Humanities at the University of Cape Town (2001–04). He has held appointments at the universities of Ibadan, Nigeria (1967–69), Birmingham, UK (1969–77), the West Indies (Professor of Sociology, 1977–9), Warwick, UK (Professor of Sociology, 1979–2006) and Oxford (2006–). He is former director of the International Migration Institute which forms part of the Oxford Martin School. Cohen was principal investigator on the Oxford Diasporas Programme, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Intellectual contribution Robin Cohen's doctoral work was published as Labour and politics in Nigeria (1974). There followed collaborative work on labour movements and labour history in other parts of Africa. However, his interest and expertise in labour devel