Arturo Escobar is a Colombian-American anthropologist and the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His academic research interests include political ecology, anthropology of development, social movements, anti-globalization movements, and post-development theory. Trained initially in science and engineering, he became concerned towards the end of his undergraduate degree with questions of hunger and development. He has an interdisciplinary PhD in Development Philosophy, Policy and Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught throughout the US, South America, and Western Europe. He has published many academic works and co-edited a number of volumes of social movements, women and place, the World Social Forum, and globalization and the decolonial option. The work with activists of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), a network of Afro-Colombian organizations, has been since 1993 one of his most important sources of inspiration on questions of activism, environment, culture and development.