Michael J. Watts (born 1951 in England) is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 2016. He is a leading critical intellectual figure of the academic left. His first book, Silent Violence:Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (1983, 2013), is considered a pioneering work in political ecology. Other published works include Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent (1992, with Allan Pred), Liberation Ecologies (1996, 2004, with Richard Peet), The Hettner Lectures: Geographies of Violence (2000), Violent Environments (2001, with Nancy Lee Peluso) and the Curse of the Black Gold (2008, with photojournalist Ed Kashi). Watts has also been an assistant editor of the award-winning New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008) and its predecessor, the Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara (1997). Source: Wikipedia (en)