Julian May is the Director of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape and holds the UNESCO Chair in African Food Systems. He is an economist and has worked on options for poverty reduction including public nutrition, land reform, social grants, information technology and urban agriculture. He has published extensively, and has served on international and national expert groups, as well as on the South African Statistics Council and the Council of the Academy of Science of South Africa.