John Rapley is a political economist specialized in global development, the world economy and economic history. Born, raised and educated in Canada, he returned to his parents’ old meeting-ground, Oxford, on a post-doctoral fellowship. After launching his academic career there in the Department of International Development, he decided to immerse himself in his subject by moving to the developing world. There, he spent the next two decades working as an academic, journalist and ultimately the creator of a think tank (the Caribbean Policy Research Institute). After helping governments navigate the 2008 financial crisis, he returned to Britain, making his home at the University of Cambridge. Teaching in the University’s Centre of Development Studies, he resumed the writing life, and now divides his time among Europe, Canada, and South Africa, where he is a senior fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, along with South Korea, where he is a visiting professor at Yonsei University’s Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development. He still keeps his hand in journalism and, following a long and varied career during which he interviewed everything from prime ministers and billionaires on their private islands to drug-lords and victims of sex-slavery, he contributes frequently to the Globe and Mail.
