Patrick Bond: fostering critical knowledge for social change

Patrick Bond is an academic who has focused his work on the struggle for social change that would bring a better life to the most marginalised sectors of society. In so doing, he fits Edward Said's description of the public intellectual as someone who is passionate about causes that express 'dissent against the status quo at a time when the struggle on behalf of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups seems so unfairly weighted against them'. In his various academic positions, Bond has contributed to government policies that promote the interests of vulnerable groups, and has worked to educate and mobilise around issues such as neoliberal policies, globalisation and climate change, which affect the under-represented in particular and the global community in general. Bond was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1961, and relocated at the age of seven with his family to Alabama in the US during the civil rights era in that country. Bond studied at several tertiary institutions in the US, including Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance, before working for social justice advocacy agencies in Philadelphia and Washington during the 1980s. He completed a PhD in geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1993, with a thesis titled 'Finance and Uneven Development in Zimbabwe'. After migrating to South Africa in 1990, he took up various positions in NGOs and academic institutions that enabled him to make a major contribution to the country. He is currently a professor of political economy at Wits University's School of Governance.