Julian May is the Director of the NRF-DSI Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape and holds the UNESCO Chair in African Food Systems., During his career he has been involved in impact assessments and poverty diagnostics in twenty countries in Africa, Latin America and the Indian Ocean Islands.  He focuses on policy options that address the structural causes of poverty, including asset inequality; information asymmetries; health shocks; and demographic transitions.  His current research includes childhood malnutrition, climate change and food system governance.

He has published over 90 academic papers on poverty and inequality in peer reviewed books and academic journals, and has edited 7 books. He is currently a member of Council of the Academy of Science in South Africa (ASSAf) and chairs the Standing Committee on Science for the Reduction of Poverty and Inequality.  He served two terms on the South African Statistics Council, chairing the sub-Committee on Population and Social Statistics.  From 2008-2012 he served on the Technical Advisory Group of the World Bank’s International Comparison Program, a worldwide statistical initiative to collect comparative price data for national accounting. In 2022, he was appointed to the South African National Planning Commission.