"Professor Roodt worked as a musician, in the banking sector and for a motor manufacturer before enrolling at Rhodes University to do a Journalism degree in 1976. After graduating with an honours degree in Sociology he obtained a lecturing post in the Department of Development Studies at the University of Bophuthatswana. He obtained a MA in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, graduating in 1985. In 1986 he was deported with ten others for “undermining the independence of Bophuthatswana” by the Mangope regime. Professor Roodt has been lecturing in the Department of Sociology since 1987, except for a two-year period from 1998-99 when he was the Research Manager for the Investigative Division of the Commission for the Restitution of Land Rights for the Eastern Cape and Free State. He completed his PhD on land restitution in South Africa in 2004. He was Head of the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University for four and a half years from 2005 to 2009. Professor Roodt is a Director on the Board of the Border Rural Committee, a Section 21 company involved in land reform and rural development in the Eastern Cape."

"Rural development, Constitutional and human rights, Governance, Participation, Marine resources harvesting and livelihoods, Local economic development."