David Harvey (b. 1935) is a leading Marxist economic geographer from Kent in the United Kingdom. He earned his doctorate at the University of Cambridge in geography and his thesis focused on political economic change in the 19th century in Kent. The interplay between politics, economics, and history remains a leading characteristic of his research and publications. In the late 1960s, Harvey began to apply principles of Marxism to geographic analysis while working at the University of Bristol. His best-known work from this time period is Social Justice and the City (1973), which presents a methodology for Marxist urban geographic analysis and argues that such an analysis can be used to create a better life for urban residents. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Harvey uses the tools of Marxist analysis of urban geography to analyze the world economy.

In addition to his Marxist geographies, Harvey is now well-known for his texts explaining Marx’s works to a contemporary reader, including A Companion to Marx’s Capital (2010). As of 2024, Harvey is a Distinguished Professor in Anthropology, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He has won many awards for his work, including the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographic Society, the Outstanding Contributor Award of the Association of American Geographers, and the Anders Retzius Gold Metal of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.