College of the Atlantic's food conference Food for Thought, Time for Action: Sustainable food, farming and fisheries for the 21st century. Keynote speaker Patel is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and a fellow at the Food First Institute of Food and Development Policy in Oakland, CA. He has just returned from two years at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where he is a research associate. He holds a PhD from Cornell University's Department of Development Sociology, an MA from the London School of Economics, and a BA in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College, Oxford.