Patrick Bond is professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand Wits School of Governance. He was formerly based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he directed the Centre for Civil Society from 2004-2016 His research interests include political economy, the environment, social policy, and geopolitics. He was educated at Swarthmore College Department of Economics and the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked with several social justice agencies in Washington and Philadelphia during the 1980s. He then enrolled in a doctoral program, supervised by David Harvey, at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering where he received his Ph.D. in 1993 (“Finance and uneven development in Zimbabwe”).

Bond’s work is primarily on the political economy of Africa, international finance, eco-social development, political ecology, and development issues in contemporary South Africa. He works in urban communities and with global justice movements in several countries. He has launched strong critiques against neoliberal governance regimes in South Africa and beyond, and the failures of capitalist states to tackle social justice and environmental degradation.

He is a prolific author, and one of the most highly cited social scientists in South Africa.