Raj Patel

Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.

He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU governments and is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. In 2016 he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award.

In addition to scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to a range of publications, from the Financial Times, to the New York Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Observer and the Scientific American.

His first book was "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." His second, "The Value of Nothing," was a New York Times and international best-seller. He is the co-author with Jason W. Moore of "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things." His acclaimed latest book, co-authored with Rupa Marya, is entitled "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice."

His first film, co-directed with Zak Piper and filmed over the course of a decade in Malawi and the United States, is the award-winning documentary "The Ants & The Grasshopper." He was a co-host of the food politics podcast "The Secret Ingredient" with Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott, and KUT’s Rebecca McInroy.