Kevin Bales

Kevin Brian Bales, born February 9, 1952, is an American academic and Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham, who earned his doctorate from the London School of Economics in 1994 with prior training in anthropology, sociology and economic history. He co-founded Free the Slaves, the United States partner organization of Anti-Slavery International, and served as its president, and he has held academic posts at the University of Chicago's Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, the Croft Institute at the University of Mississippi, and the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull. His 1999 book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy examined contemporary forced labor across five industries, including Thai prostitution, Mauritanian water sales, Brazilian charcoal production, Indian agriculture and Pakistani brickmaking, and was adapted into a Peabody Award winning documentary. Bales co-authored the Global Slavery Index and has served as a United Nations consultant on human trafficking, and in 2017 he was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George for his antislavery work.