Biographical sketch: William Munro is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Studies Program at Illinois Wesleyan University. His research focuses on the politics of agrarian change, development, and state formation. He is a longtime visitor to the School of Development Studies, conducting fieldwork in KwaZulu-Natal and Zimbabwe. He has published extensively on the theory and practice of development in sub-Saharan Africa, and the author of 'The Moral Economy of the State: Conservation, Community Development and State Making in Zimbabwe.'
Between 1999 and 2003, he was a member of the management team for an IDRC-funded project on Donor Aid in Post-Conflict Societies, based at the School of Development Studies, and he was an honorary research fellow at the School from 2003 to 2006.
More recently, he has been researching power and conflict in the global agrofood system, with a particular focus on social activism against agricultural biotechnology. In collaboration with Rachel Schurman, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota, he has recently published a book Fighting for the future of food: activists versus agribusiness in the struggle over biotechnology, University of Minnesota Press (2010).
His current project builds on that research to assess the relationships between Science and Technology Policy, agricultural R&D, and the development vision of the current South African government.
Other recent publications include:
'Targeting Capital: A Cultural Economy Approach to Explaining Efficacy in Two Anti-Genetic Engineering Movements'.(with Rachel Schurman) American Journal of Sociology (July 2009)
'Risk, Rights, and Regulation: The Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology in South Africa. in Reconstructing Biotechnologies: Critical Social Analyses', edited by Guido Ruivenkamp, Joost Jongerden and Shuji Hisano (Wageningen Academic Press, 2008).
'(G)local Activism and the Biotechnology Project'.(with Rachel Schurman) in Reconstructing Biotechnologies: Critical Social Analyses, edited by Guido Ruivenkamp, Joost Jongerden and Shuji Hisano (Wageningen Academic Press, 2008).
Publications:
Munro, W. (2001). Aid, Development and the State: Assessing Post-Conflict Situations. Research Report No. 47. 
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