Philip David McMichael is an Australian-born sociologist, known for his contributions to the field of Global Development.
His research primarily focuses on world-historical development and social change, with a particular emphasis on transformations in the global food system and their political-ecological consequences.
He then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in world-historical Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, starting in 1973.
[2] He has also authored six editions of his best-selling textbook,Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Sage, 1996–2017), now co-authored with Heloise Weber of the University of Queensland (2022, 2025).
[citation needed] McMichael received the Outstanding Career Accomplishments Award, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University in 2021.