Kevin Bales - Professional and Academic Career

Professional and Academic Career

Bales graduated from Ponca City High School in Ponca City, Oklahoma in 1970. Bales earned his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 1994. He also holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma, an MA in Sociology from the University of Mississippi, and an MSc in Economic History from the London School of Economics.

In 1990, Bales teamed with Simon Pell, then head of Arts for Labour in the UK, to form the fund-raising and research consultancy, Pell & Bales Ltd. The firm raises funds for medical charities, human rights groups, environmental campaigns, overseas development, and the Labour Party. In November 2011 fundraising by the company passed the one billion pound mark (£1,000,000,000 or $1.6 billion dollars).

He has since served as a Trustee of Anti-Slavery International and as a consultant to the United Nations Global Program on Trafficking of Human Beings. He has advised the US, British, Irish, Norwegian and Nepali governments and the Economic Community of West African States on matters relating to the formulation of policy on slavery and human trafficking. Bales edited an Anti-Human Trafficking Toolkit for the United Nations, and published a report on forced labor in the US with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley.

From 2001 to 2005 Bales was a visiting professor of International Studies at the Croft Institute at the University of Mississippi.

Presently, in addition to his role as Co-Founder of Free The Slaves, Bales holds the position of Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), University of Hull, as well as that of Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative.