South African-British social anthropologist; studied under Radcliffe-Brown at the University of Cape Town and under C. G. Seligman at the London School of Economics, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1929. Schapera played an important role in the establishment of social anthropology in South Africa in the 1930's and 40's, where his students included Max Gluckman and Hilda Kuper. In the 1950's and 60's he taught in London.

Schapera did pioneering work on the South African Khoisan people, with critical implications for colonial policy in South Africa (where he also criticized the then nascent apartheid system). He made important early contributions to anthropological studies of historical processes and social change, as well as to the study of land tenure and migration (particularly in Bechuanaland, where he did very extensive, mostly empirical, research).