About
Jason Hickel is a political economist, author, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is an ICREA Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science & Technology (ICTA), and at the Department of Political Science & Public Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He serves on the Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable of the US National Academy of Sciences, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, the Rodney Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, and the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health.
Jason's research focuses on global inequality and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), listed by the Financial Times and New Scientist as a book of the year.
His earlier work focused on colonialism, anti-colonial struggles and the labour movement in South Africa, which is the subject of his first book, Democracy as Death: The Moral Order of Anti-Liberal Politics in South Africa (University of California Press, 2015). He is co-editor of two further ethnographic volumes: Ekhaya: The Politics of Home in KwaZulu-Natal (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014) and Hierarchy and Value: Comparative Perspectives on Moral Order (Berghahn, 2018).
In addition to his academic work, Jason writes for The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and contributes to a number of other online outlets including Al Jazeera, New Internationalist, and Monthly Review. His media appearances include the BBC World Service, Viewsnight, the Financial Times, Sky News, NPR, and a range of podcasts.
Jason presently holds an ERC Synergy grant for research exploring novel pathways for radical climate mitigation, economic democracy, and post-capitalist transition.