Kevin Brian Bales, (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. 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 with a thesis on Early innovations in social research: the Poverty Survey of Charles Booth. He 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, the Head of Arts for Labour in the UK at the time, 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 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. In 2015 he was a Professor of Human Rights at the Pozen Family Center for 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. Presently, Bales holds the position of Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham, as well as that of Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London. He served on the board of directors of the International Cocoa Initiative, and currently serves on the board of the Freedom Fund. Books 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