Walden is concurrently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.
His 25 books include Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2019), Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash (London: Bloomsbury/Zed, 2019), Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009), Capitalism’s Last Stand? (London: Zed, 2013), Dragons in Distress: Asia’s Miracle Economies in Crisis (London: Penguin, 1990), and Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982).
He has been named Outstanding Public Scholar by the International Studies Association in San Francisco in 2008. He has honorary doctorates from Panteion University in Athens (2006) and Murdoch University in Perth (2012).
As a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist, he has faced prison, libel cases and repression, but has stood up for social and environmental justice in the Philippines and internationally. Between 2009 and 2016 he served as a Congressman in the Philippines, successfully pushing for laws benefiting migrant workers and being a principal author of a number of key laws, including the Reproductive Health Law, Agrarian Reform Extension Law, and Compensation for Victims of Human Rights Abuse Law.