Milford Bateman is a Visiting Professor of Economics at Federal Fluminese University in Rio De Janeiro, Adjunct Professor of Development Studies at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, and Affiliated Researcher at the Future Forum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

Dr Bateman obtained his PhD from the University of Bradford (UK) in 1993. From 1991 to 2000 Dr Bateman held a tenured position as Assistant Professor then Associate Professor in East European Economics at the University of Wolverhampton. As a freelance consultant from 2000, he has worked on local economic development projects for almost all of the major international development agencies with assignments in the Middle East, China, Africa and Latin America. 

Dr Bateman has also published widely on the key issues affecting local economic development, including the influential ‘Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism’ published by Zed Books in 2010 and which is now being prepared for a 2nd updated edition due out in 2020. His latest book published in January 2019 by Routledge in cooperation with UNCTAD and co-edited with Stephanie Blankenburg and Richard Kozul-Wright is entitled ‘The Rise and Fall of Global Microcredit: Development, Debt and Disillusion’. Finally, his most recent work with Maren Duvendack and Nicholas Loubere seeks to critically assess the development impact of the global ‘fintech’ (financial technology) movement epitomised by such as Kenya’s iconic M-Pesa.