Jaap Van Velsen was born in
Soerabaja as the son of Wilhelmina Louisa Metzelaar and Abraham van Velsen, a businessman at the time and later a politician with a focus on culture. Jaap studied law at
Utrecht before studying anthropology at
Oxford and
Manchester. He did fieldwork among the
Tonga in
Nyasaland, developing a method of 'situational analysis' in his 1957 PhD (eventually published as
The Politics of Kinship), and later fieldwork among the
Karamajong in
Uganda. In 1959 he joined the African Studies department at the
University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, but was deported in 1966 as a result of his opposition to
Ian Smith's
UDI. He became the first professor of sociology at the
University of Zambia, and later Director of the
Institute of African Studies. In 1973 he moved to the
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth before retiring in 1983. Living with
multiple sclerosis, he committed suicide in 1990. Jaap was married to Ruth van Velsen (1923-2010) and together they had three children: Cleo, Peter and Jan. ==Works==