Ali Rattansi was born in Nairobi and educated at the Universities of Manchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He has taught at Cambridge, Leicester, The Open University, and City, University of London. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a Visiting Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. His many books include Racism, Modernity and Identity (Polity Press, 1994), and Multiculturalism A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011).