Biography
Saturnino ('Jun') M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, and was the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Peasant Studies for 15 years, until early 2023. He is a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for his ongoing research project, "Commodity & land rushes: reshaping five spheres of global social life - food, climate change politics, labour/migration, state/citizenship, and geopolitics" in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He is also a Distinguished Professor at China Agricultural University, Beijing, and an associate at the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute (TNI). He was Canada Research Chair (T2) in International Development Studies at Saint Mary's University in Canada in 2007-2010.
His publications includes books, journal special issues, and articles. His Open Access books include Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements (with Marc Edelman) and Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World (co-edited with Ian Scoones et al.). His latest monograph (co-authored with Jennifer C. Franco) is Scholar-Activism and Land Struggles, published in 2023. He is currently co-editing (with Jennifer Franco) The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics.
His research interests include: land politics/land rush, (trans)national agrarian movements (TAMs); migrant farmworkers, climate change politics; food politics/food sovereignty; BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and global agrarian transformations. His geographic areas of research interest are: Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and South America. He also studies international institutional 'spaces' of state- society interactions, including the role of global governance institutions.
He works within the tradition of, and at the same time studies and writes about, scholar-activism. This has been influenced by his background: He has been deeply involved in rural social movements since the early 1980s in the Philippines, and later, internationally. He was a member of the international agrarian movement La Via Campesina's International Coordinating Committee (ICC) in 1993-1996. He has engaged, selectively, with international inter-governmental institutions on specific issues: a member of UN FAO's High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Large-Scale Land Acquisitions, lead-author of a European Parliament-commissioned study on EU registered corporations engaged in international land deals, and took the lead in synthesizing the FAO studies in 17 countries of the global land rush as it unfolded in Latin America and the Caribbean, among others.
He is in the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers List for six consecutive years, 2018-2023. He has received the Ester Boserup Prize for Research on Development (2020), the Interpreting and Changing the World Award: The COHD Prize (China Agricultural University, Beijing, 2023), and is a winner of the National Book Award 2009 in the Philippines. He is a co-editor of the ICAS small book series in critical agrarian studies, all of the available titles in it are now Open Access, co-coordinates the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS), Land Deal Politics Initiatives (LDPI), Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiatives (ERPI), and BRICS Initiatves in Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS). He collaborates with the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists in the South (CASAS) on a number of training initiatives, especially the Annual Writeshop in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism, and with the Transnational Institute (TNI) for its Activist Course for Activists (in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism).
International Institute of Social Studies
- borras@iss.nl
- Location
- Kortenaerkade 12, 's - Gravenhage
More information
Work
- Jun Borras, Ian Scoones, Amita Baviskar, Ruth Hall, M Edelman & Wendy Wolford (2023) - Climate Change and Agrarian Struggles - [link]
- Jun Borras, Ian Scoones, M Edelman, Ruth Hall, Amita Baviskar & Wendy Wolford (2023) - Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies - [link]
- Jun Borras & Marc Edelman (2023) - Le dinamiche politiche dei movimenti agrari transnazionali (Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements) (Italian Edition) - [link]
- Saturnino M. Borras & Jennifer C. Franco (2023) - Plantationocene and Contemporary Agrarian Struggles - Annals of the American Association of Geographers - doi: 10.1080/24694452.2023.2224855 - [link]
- Jun Borras (2023) - Cuestionando la reforma agraria asistida por el mercado: Experiencias desde Brasil, Colombia y Sudáfrica - [link]
- Jun Borras (2023) - Foreword to Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing - doi: 10.4324/9781003080916
- Jun Borras (2023) - Contemporary agrarian, rural and rural–urban movements and alliances - Journal of Agrarian Change, 23 (3), 453-476 - doi: 10.1111/joac.12549 - [link]
- Paul Nicholson & Jun Borras (2023) - It wasn’t an intellectual construction: The founding of La Via Campesina, achievements and challenges – a conversation - Journal of Peasant Studies, 50 (2), 610-626 - doi: 10.1080/03066150.2023.2174856 - [link]
- Jun Borras (2023) - La Via Campesina – transforming agrarian and knowledge politics, and co-constructing a field: a laudatio - The Journal of Peasant Studies, 50 (2), 691-724 - doi: 10.1080/03066150.2023.2176760 - [link]
- Jun Borras (2023) - La Via Campesina – transforming agrarian and knowledge politics, and co-constructing a field: a laudatio - Revista Cuestion Agraria, 1-67
- B Cousins, Jun Borras, S Sauer & J Ye (2018) - Globalizations (Journal)
- Tsegaye Moreda Shegro, Jun Borras, Alberto Alonso Fradejas & Z Brent (2018) - Third World Quarterly (Journal)
- E Corbera, C (Carol) Hunsberger, C Vaddanaphuti & Jun Borras (2017) - Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement (Journal)
- Jun Borras (2015) - Canadian Journal of Development Studies (Journal)
- M Edelman, JC Scott, A Baviskar, Jun Borras, D Kandiyoti, E Holt-Gimenez, T Weis & W Wolford (2014) - Journal of Peasant Studies (Journal)
- M Edelman, C Oya & Jun Borras (2013) - Third World Quarterly (Journal)
- Jun Borras, Cris Kay, S Gomez & J Wilkinson (2012) - Canadian Journal of Development Studies (Journal)
- Chunyu Wang, Jun Borras & C (Carol) Hunsberger (2012) - Paper for the University of Cape Town, South Africa, SANPAD Project Workshop
- Jun Borras, JC Franco, C (Carol) Hunsberger & Chunyu Wang (2012) - Paper presented at the ‘Global Land Grabbing Conference II
- Jun Borras (2023) - Interpreting & Changing the World Award: The COHD Prize
- Jun Borras (2022) - Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher 2022
- Jun Borras (2021) - Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher
- Jun Borras (2020) - Ester Boserup Prize for Research on Development
- Jun Borras (2020) - Web of Science Highly Cited Research
- Jun Borras (2019) - Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher
- Jun Borras (2018) - Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher
- Jun Borras (2009) - National Book Award 2009 -- Social Sciences (Philippines)
China Agricultural University
- Start date approval
- December 2022
- End date approval
- June 2025
- Place
- BEIJING
- Description
- (honorary) Distinguished Professor
General Information
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISSGENERAL-23-24
4240 Agrarian and Food Politics
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-4240-23-24
3105 Research Paper Preparation
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-3105-23-24
4150 Political Economy
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-4150-23-24
Board of Examiners
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-BOE-23-24
2101 The Making of Development
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-2101-23-24
Global Poverty, Local Solutions
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-MI-8102
5401 Research Paper
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-5401-23-24
Major AFES
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-AFES-23-24
Major AFES
- Year
- 2023
- Course Code
- ISS-AFES-22-23