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Biography

Saturnino ('Jun') M. Borras Jr. is a Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of ÌÇÐÄÖ±²¥ (EUR); is part of the Erasmus Professors program for positive societal impact at EUR); and was the Editor-in-Chief of for 15 years, until 2023. He was a recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant (2019-2025) for his research project, ": 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 (). He was the Canada Research Chair (T2) in International Development Studies at Saint Mary's University in Canada in 2007-2010.

He is part of the team of 4 PIs, including Esteve Corbera (ICTA), Ian Scoones (IDS Sussex) and Anna Tsing (Aarhus and UC, Santa Cruz) that has been awarded an ERC Synergy grant (2026-2031) for their project 'Land and Life in the Anthropocene: Landscape reform'. The project will formally start on 1 May 2026.

His publications include books, journal special issues, and articles. His Open Access books include , (with M. Edelman), (co-edited with I. Scoones et al.), (co-edited with I. Scoones et al.), (co-authored with J.C. Franco, 2023, , 2024). He is co-editor (with J.C. Franco) of (2025) and co-author (with J.C. Franco) (2025). He is currently completing the manuscript of his monograph (with J.C. Franco),  Land and Climate Politics (Cambridge University Press).

He is a co-guest editor of the forthcoming Special Issues of Agriculture and Human Values: ": The politics of land and labour, production and social reproduction"; Globalizations journal: "The spectacular land rush and its consequences"; and Third World Quarterly journal: "Democratizing Knowledge Politics : Scholar-activism and agrarian and environmental justice 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, . 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 a co-editor of the  in critical agrarian studies. All of the available titles in it are now Open Access and available in multiple language editions. For the latest book series event, see .

He co-coordinates the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (), Land Deal Politics Initiatives (), Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiatives (), BRICS Initiatves in Critical Agrarian Studies (), Democratizing Knowledge Politics Initiative (), and the .

The various networks he co-coordinate regularly organize international conferences of engaged researchers in conversation with social movements and policy practitioners. The latest is .

He collaborates with the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists in the South () on a number of training initiatives, especially the  international in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism. He also collaborates with the Transnational Institute (TNI) for its Activist Course for Activists (in Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism) running regularly in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa regions. 

He serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Agrarian Change, Third World Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Journal of World-Systems Research, Journal of Russian Peasant Studies, Alternatives Sud, and Cambridge University Press Elements Book Series (Global Development Studies). 

He has received the (2020), the Interpreting and Changing the World Award: The COHD Prize (China Agricultural University, Beijing, 2023), and is a winner of the in the Philippines. 

His latest blog is .

Animated Painting .

Latest short videos: , ,