Siddharth Kara is an expert in contemporary enslavement and human trafficking around the world. He wrote a series of popular non-fiction texts on the subject: Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2009), Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia (2012), and Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (2017). The books were praised by academics, policy makers, and other experts in the field.

Kara has a BA in English and Philosophy from Duke University, an MBA from Columbia, and a law degree from the private British university BPP. He is the British Academy Global Professor and Rights Lab Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at the University of Nottingham, and a senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. He “advises several UN agencies and numerous governments on anti-slavery policy and law” (“Siddharth Kara.” University of Nottingham). Cobalt Red is an extension of his previous research on forced labor and human rights abuses in developing countries. Kara describes his research for Cobalt Red and his other projects as “self-funded,” although he notes in the Acknowledgements for Cobalt Red that he received support for his work from “Humanity United, the British Academy, the Schooner Foundation, Bruce Korman, Peggy Koenig, and John Hayes” (252).