Ali M. El-Agraa (born 1 January 1941 in Wad Medani, Sudan) is Emeritus Professor of International Economic Integration, Fukuoka University, Japan. He was invited to Fukuoka University in 1988 while he was a Visiting Professor with the International University of Japan (1984-6), on leave from the University of Leeds (UK), which he joined in 1971. He left Sudan in 1964 for England where he became a permanent resident and in 1977 was granted British citizenship. He is married to Diana Latham Moult (20 October 1979) and has a son (Mark Stephen) and a daughter (Frances Hanna). He is now back in the UK, living in Greater London. Education Ali received his earlier education in the Sudan. In 1959, he obtained Division One in the Sudan School Certificate (awarded by the University of Cambridge, UK, in collaboration with the Sudan Examinations Council). In 1961, he took the Intermediate Examinations (roughly equivalent to British A-Levels) in the University of Khartoum with Honours in all three subjects (Economics/Mathematics, Geography and Social Anthropology). In 1964, he was awarded a BSc (Econ) Honours, by the University of Khartoum, externally examined by UK universities, including Cambridge, Oxford and The London School of Economics and Political Science. For his postgraduate studies, he went to the University of Leeds (UK), where, in 1967, he obtained an M.A. in economics with distinction. After becoming a lecturer in economics at the University of Khartoum in 1967, he returned to the University of Leeds in 1968 to research for his doctorate under the supervision of the late Professor Arthur Joseph Brown, but before finishing his doctorate, the University of Leeds appointed him Lecturer in Economics in 1971. In 2000, he was awarded a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) by the University of Leeds for a thesis titled Theoretical and Policy Aspects of Protection and International Economic Cooperation. In 2001, he was awarded a higher doctorate (DSc) by Japan's Kyushu University for his book Regional Integration: Experience, Theory and Measurement, and for his overall academic record. Academic field Ali's main academic field is International Economics, with several books (some translated into Japanese and Chinese) on various aspects of the field. Most of his research is on International Economic Integration, with the 9th edition of his 1980 book, The Economics of the European Community, published as a students' text in October 2011 by Cambridge University Press with th title The European Union: Economics and