Dr. Raj Patel

(FCF-08)
Research Professor, Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
Austin, Texas
United States

Focus Areas

Community & Civic Engagement
Advocacy
Community & Civic Engagement
Community Based Participatory Research
Political Science
Economic Security
Economic Development
Poverty
Trade / Foreign Policy
Education
History
Food Systems
Food Systems
Health
Public Health & Safety
Leadership
Communications
Racial Equity & Healing
Racism / Undoing Structural Racism
Social Justice
Gender Issues
Religion / Faith / Spirituality
Social Justice
Sustainability
Environment & Sustainable Development

Biography

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. 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. Raj co-taught the 2014 Edible Education class at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan. In 2016 he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and was an Advisor to Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Times of India, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. 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. His latest, co-written with Jason W. Moore, is A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He can be heard co-hosting the fortnightly food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient with Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott, and KUT’s Rebecca McInroy. He is currently working on a ground-breaking documentary project about the global food system with award-winning director Steve James.