Contributors

Jean Said Makdisi is a Palestinian writer and scholar. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Teta, Mother and Me. She lives in Beirut.

Caskey Russell is from Seattle Washington, and has lived in Oregon, Iowa, Wyoming, and New Zealand. He is a father, a professor, a musician, and an enrolled member of the Tlingit Nation (Eagle / Kooyu Kwáan) of Alaska.

Albert 'Albie' Louis Sachs (born 30 January 1935) is an activist and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. After having his arm blown off by a car-bomb in Mozambique due to his opposition to apartheid, he fled to the United States but later returned to South Africa and currently resides in Cape Town.

Richard Rumelt is a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Business. He also taught for several years at INSEAD in France, and has been a consultant to a wide range of organisations, from the Samuel Goldwyn Company to Shell.

David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the author of many books about politics, including The Politics of Good Intentions (2006), Political Hypocrisy (2008) and The Confidence Trap (2013). He writes regularly about politics and current affairs for a wide range of publications including the London Review of Books.
Politics is the first book in Profile's new Ideas in Profile series.

Christopher Rush was born in St Monans and for thirty years taught literature in Edinburgh. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day (recently listed as one of the 100 greatest Scottish books ever) and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully. He now lives near his childhood home.

Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) is the author of what is probably the most important novel in Mexican literature. Pedro Páramo was published in 1955 and went on to be translated into over forty languages, sell over a million copies in English alone and initiate an entire literary movement. Rulfo's other literary works are The Burning Plain and The Golden Cockerel. He also worked as an anthropologist and photographer.

Robert Rowland Smith began his career as a Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He lectured internationally on philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis. He published the award-winning Derrida and Autobiography in 1995 and laid the ground for two later academic works. These are Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art and On Modern Poetry: From Theory to Total Criticism, which received a Choice award for 'outstanding academic book' of 2013.

In 1998 Robert left Oxford to go into management consultancy, first in Los Angeles and then in London, where he was a partner in a firm specialising in leadership and organisation development. It was during this period that Robert trained in Constellations.

With the 2009 publication of the bestselling Breakfast with Socrates, Robert began working on a portfolio basis that today involves: (1) writing books: Driving with Plato came out in 2011, and 2013 year saw the publication of Robert's book for business leaders, The Reality Test. He's now researching a project with the working title of The Architecture of Being. (2) advising businesses: alongside his work with leaders, Robert has set up Ennovation.Co to help organisations innovate by drawing on unconscious energy. (3) running New Constellations: Robert runs regular workshops for people facing challenges in their personal or professional life, or with creative projects.
(4) giving talks: Robert has spoken to audiences from Tokyo to El Salvador on subjects including love, enlightenment, the self and innovation.
(5)doing journalism: Robert has had a column in both the Evening Standard and the Sunday Times, and continues to write articles for newspapers and magazines.

Robert sits on the board of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, and the editorial board of Angelaki, the journal he helped to found. He is a founding faculty member of both The School of Life and the London Graduate School. He holds a top First in English and a D. Phil., both from Oxford University.

Saumya Roy is a journalist and activist based in Mumbai. In 2010, she co-founded Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of Mumbai's poorest micro-entrepreneurs; through this she met the community who depend on Deonar. Her writing has appeared in Forbes India Magazine, wsj.com and Bloomberg News among others, and she has contributed a chapter to Dharavi: The Cities Within (HarperCollins, 2013), an anthology of essays on Asia's largest slum.