In addition to a long academic career, Max-Neef achieved an impressive minority vote when he stood as candidate in the Chilean Presidential election of 1993.

He was subsequently appointed Rector of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. After teaching economics at the University of California (Berkeley) in the 1960s, he served as a Visiting Professor at a number of US and Latin American universities.

He has worked on development projects in Latin America for the Pan-American Union, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Labour Office. At this seminar, he will talk about a new paradigm for human well-being in relation to economics and ecology.