Professor David Seddon is currently Principal of South London College. He is also Professorial Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia and an Associate of the Centre for International Cooperation and Security in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He has held academic posts at the Universities of Cape Town and of the Witwatersrand in South Africa; at Northwestern University and the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, USA; at the Universite Mohamed V in Rabat, Morocco, at Boagzici in Istanbul and at the Middle Technical University in Ankara, Turkey; as well as at Cambridge University and the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. From 1994 until September 2006 (when he took early retirement), he was Professor of Politics and Sociology at the University of East Anglia.

He has BA (Hons) and Masters degrees from Cambridge University and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has wide research experience as a social scientist in the broad field of politics, conflict, security and development, as well as in rural development and political economy more generally, based largely on fieldwork undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa & the Middle East and South Asia over a period of some 35 years.

He has considerable experience management experience. He was for some time Managing Director of the Overseas Development Group (ODG), a non-profit training, research and consultancy group based at the University of East Anglia. He has managed numerous large interdisciplinary research programmes and projects for a variety of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, and has also been engaged as team leader (and individual consultant) by a wide range of other agencies (eg the World Bank, IFAD, Asian Development Bank, DANIDA, Danchurchaid, Lutheran World Federation, Oxfam, Christian Aid, etc.) on project appraisal, monitoring & evaluation and impact assessment, and on conflict and security issues. He is now Director of an independent consultancy group, Critical Faculty, which specialises in ‘emerging global issues, in development, security and risk assessment’, and is currently doing work for DFID and for the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovations (CSFI) on the policy implications of migration and remittances, and for UNRISD on ‘Social Responses to Inequality and Policy Change’.

His publications are wide-ranging and reflect his broad interdisciplinary approach to development studies and development issues, in Asia, African and the Middle East. Recent books on the Maoist insurgency and on the crisis in Nepal (Living Under the Red Flag, The People’s War in Nepal, Nepal - A State of Poverty, Nepal in Crisis, etc.) and on the Congo (Congo: Plunder and Resistance) deal with failed and failing states. Earlier books (Moroccan Peasants, Peasants and Workers in Nepal, The Struggle for Basic Needs in Nepal, Free Markets & Food Riots) and articles deal with the popular forces ‘from below’ for change economic and political change. He has recently compiled a Political and Economic Dictionary of Africa, and a Political and Economic Dictionary of the Middle East, both for Europa Publications.

Despite having taken early retirement from University employment, he is concerned to continue making a contribution in the educational field, but now with a greater focus reference on making education available to students from a wide range of backgrounds and countries, and on the development of vocational and professional training and education for international students and the building of new bridges between the more developed and the less developed world.