Professor Fleming works on the history of Africa and the African Diaspora.  His research focuses on black South African popular cultures (mainly music, sport, literature and theatre) during the twentieth century.  Dr. Fleming has published in various academic journals, including History in Africa, The International Journal of History of Sport, and Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies.  He is also the co-editor of Music, Performance and African Identities (New York: Routledge, 2011).   Most recently, he published Opposing Apartheid on Stage: King Kong the Musical (University of Rochester Press, 2020), which investigates the importance of the seminal South African jazz musical, King Kong, and its performers on the cultural history of South Africa and within the Black Atlantic as a whole.   

At the moment, he is working on two book projects.  The first examines the struggle for swimming pools and swimming pool access by black South Africans throughout the twentieth century.  The latter concerns the history of black South African boxing throughout the era of apartheid.