Kevin Bales

Bales was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the global antislavery movement.

In 2015 he was the Richard and Ann Pozen Professor of Human Rights at the University of Chicago. From 2001 to 2005 Bales was a visiting professor of International Studies at the Croft Institute at the University of Mississippi.

Most recently, Bales received the 2011 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Improving World Order.

In 2007 in response to Kevin Bales's interview with Democracy Now! about Free The Slaves, investigative journalist Christian Parenti wrote a criticism of Bales claiming he had made false claims about the chocolate industry. Specifically, Parenti argues that "Bales goes around fund raising, flogging his book and promoting himself on the basis that he has successfully reformed the chocolate industry and largely halted its use of child labor in West Africa. But no such thing has happened... Bales’ organization FTS defended the chocolate industry when the Department of Labor sought to list cocoa as a product tainted by slave and child labor." Bales' work has also come under critique by sociologist Julia O'Connell Davidson.

In 2000 Bales was awarded the Premio Viareggio prize for his services to humanity. In 2003 he received the Human Rights Award from the University of Alberta; in 2004, the Judith Sargeant Murray Award for Human Rights; and in 2005 the Laura Smith Davenport Human Rights Award. In 2006 the association of British Universities named Bales' work as one of the top "100 world-changing discoveries of the last fifty years". Two years later in 2008, Utne Reader named him one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." In 2008 he was also invited to address the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Paris, and to join in the planning of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative. The following year he was awarded a Prime Mover fellowship, and in 2010 awarded an honorary doctorate by Loyola University of Chicago for "outstanding service on behalf of human rights and social justice."

Dr. Bales has written extensively on modern slavery. Perhaps his best-known book is Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (1999; revised edition, 2004, further edition 2012), a firsthand analysis of the operations of five slave-based businesses: prostitution in Thailand, selling of water in Mauritania, production of charcoal in Brazil, general agriculture in India, and brickmaking in Pakistan. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the book "a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery". The book has been published in ten different languages. The book formed the basis for a film, Slavery: A Global Investigation, made by TrueVision in 2000, which won a Peabody Award.

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).

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.

Martin Albrow's globalization theory and Darren O'Byrne's theories on human rights have influenced Bales' research, as has the empirical training he received from Jack Gibbs and Larry DeBord. Some commentators believe his views on modern slavery were anticipated by contributors to the 1970s mode of production debate, and that his work on debt bondage in India and Pakistan was anticipated by the Marxist Tom Brass.

Kevin Brian Bales CMG (born 1952) is Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham, co-author of the Global Slavery Index, and was a co-founder and previously president of Free the Slaves. Free the Slaves is the US sister organization of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organization.