Colin Leys was employed as an academic at various universities of Oxford (Balliol College), Makerere (Uganda), Sussex, Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Nairobi (Kenya), Sheffield, and Queen's University, Canada, where he is an emeritus professor of Political Studies .

He also holds an honorary professorship at Goldsmiths University of London. Until 2009 he was co-editor of the Socialist Register

Socialist Register

Socialist Register is an annual journal. It was founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville. They had criticisms of the New Left Review after Perry Anderson assumed leadership of the NLR. Miliband and Saville sought to bring about a journal in the orientation of The New Reasoner....

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His research has been on the political economy of development in Africa and the UK.

There is an archive of 16 files of papers relating to his research for Politicians and Policies: An essay on politics in Acholi, Uganda, 1962–1965 (East African Publishing House, 1967) held at the University of Sussex.

Key works

European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, 1959)

Underdevelopment in Kenya; The Political Economy of Neocolonialism (James Currey and University of California Press, 1975)

Politics in Britain (Heinemann Educational Books 1983, revised edition published by Verso 1986 and 1989)

The Rise and Fall of Development Theory (Indiana University Press, 1996)

Namibia's Liberation Struggle: The two-edged sword (with John S. Saul, James Currey and Ohio University Press, 1995)

The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch, Verso, 1997)

Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal democracy and the public interest (Verso, 2001)

Histories of Namibia: Living through the liberation struggle (edited with Susan Brown, Merlin Press, 2005)

The Plot Against the NHS (with Stewart Player, Merlin Press, 2011)