Rupert Russell – Keynote Speaker

Dr. Rupert Russell is a sociologist, writer, and filmmaker whose work exposes the hidden complexity of our disorderly world. His book Price Wars: How the Commodity Markets Made Our Chaotic World was published by Doubleday at Penguin Random House to critical acclaim. He has traced silent butterfly effects across five continents, twenty countries, and four war zones. His work shows how their power comes from the intricate connections between the financial markets and commodity supply chains, climate shocks and authoritarian militarism, migration waves and populist insurgencies.

Dr. Russell has a PhD and MA in Sociology from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He received a Double Starred First BA in the Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University, Jesus College, where he graduated top of his class. He has been interviewed as an expert on commodities and geopolitics by The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Intercept, The Huffington Post, Jacobin, CBC, among many others.

An open member of the LBGTQ+ community, Rupert Russell has nevertheless reported from some of the world’s most homophobic countries, many of which were also war zones. He has spoken about the unique challenges diverse journalists face, and the necessity of such reporting. He has also written about how to succeed in academia and write a book with dyslexia, which he was diagnosed with at age 8.