Ruth Taplin is Director of the Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies, London, which won Exporter of the Year in Partnership in Trading/Pathfinder for the UK in 2000. She received her doctorate from the London School of Economics and is the author/editor of 14 books and over 200 articles. She has been Editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics for 12 years. Currently she is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, the University of Leicester and a number of universities globally. She is Visiting Professor at the School of International Business and Management, University of Warsaw, Poland, and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Mumbai Economics Department in January 2007.