Scott Pearson in Australia

Scott Pearson, who has studied economic change in developing countries for six decades, taught economic development and international trade at the Food Research Institute at Stanford for 34 years. He has coauthored a dozen books, won several awards for his research and teaching, and advised governments on food and agricultural policy. Scott has worked and traveled extensively in Asia, Africa and Europe. As one of our most versatile faculty leaders, he has accompanied 67 Travel/Study trips, on all seven continents.

During this program, Scott will identify the key turning points in Australia’s political, economic, and cultural history. He will explain the early subsistence strategies and later struggles of Australia’s indigenous peoples—the Aboriginal Australians—who inhabited the Australian continent for 50,000 years, the British convict settlements that led to extensive 19th-century immigration based on booms of gold and wool exports, independent Australia’s remarkable mineral-led transformation and ensuing cultural conflicts in the 20th century, and lingering key 21st-century issues—Aboriginal land rights, protectionism, and multiculturalism.

• Professor of agricultural economics, 1968–2002

• Director, Food Research Institute, 1991–1996

• Dean’s Award for Teaching in the School of Humanities and Sciences

• MA, international relations, Johns Hopkins University

• PhD, economics, Harvard University