Ali Kadri is a leading scholar specializing in the political economy and development economics of the Middle East, North Africa, and East Asia. His extensive writings include notable books such as:

• The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction (2023)
• China’s Path to Development Against Neoliberalism (2021)
• A Theory of Forced Labour Migration: The Proletarianisation of the West Bank Under Occupation, 1967–1992 (2020)
• Imperialism with Reference to Syria (2019)
• Syria: From National Independence to Proxy War (2019)
• The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World (2017)
• Development Challenges and Solutions After the Arab Spring (2016)
• The Unmaking of Arab Socialism (2016)
• Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment (2014).

He currently teaches at Sun Yat-sen University. Previously, he was a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He has also been affiliated with the London School of Economics as senior fellow at its Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy and a visiting fellow at its Department of International Development. Before rejoining the academia, he worked for a decade at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA) in Lebanon, where he served as head of its Economic Analysis Section.