Steve Keen was one of the handful of economists to realise that a serious economic crisis was coming our way, and to publicly warn of it from as early as December 2005.

This, and his pioneering work on modelling debt-deflation, resulted in him winning the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review for being the economist whose work is most likely to prevent a future financial crisis (http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/keen-roubini-and-baker-win-revere-award-for-economics-2/). He maintains a highly influential blog on economics (www.debtdeflation.com/blogs)

His book "Debunking Economics: The naked emperor dethroned?", is a classic exposition of why conventional economic theory is not only wrong, but more of a threat to the survival of capitalism than any number of left-wing revolutionaries.

I'm Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. In 2010 I won the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review, for being the economist who most cogently warned that the economic crisis that began in 2007 was imminent. I am a staunch critic of mainstream economic thinking, and author of the influential blog www.debtdeflation.com/blogs.

Prior to becoming an academic in 1987, I was school teacher, education officer for an overseas aid organisation, conference organiser, editor, computer programmer, journalist, and finally a government advisor during the days when Australia's government had a serious industries policy.

The latter experience is what convinced me to undertake an academic career: I saw economists, employed by the government, actively undermine this industrial development policy at every step. I was already a trenchant critic of conventional economics at the time, having led the "Political Economy" revolt at the University of Sydney when I was an undergraduate student in the early to mid 1970s.

I realised that, if I was to help defeat the woolly thinking and ideological day-dreaming that passed for analysis amongst economists, I would have to do it on the home territory where these ideas were brewed and sustained: university campuses.

Incidentally, my targets in that weren't just neoclassical economists. My initial academic thesis (in my Masters) was on flaws in the Marxian labor theory of value. That led to my first two published academic papers, which provided the basis for the chapter on Marxian economics in Debunking Economics.

I've been substantially more successful than I had expected in academia. Iconoclastic views aren't well received in economics, but I have been lucky to have an unusual brand of iconoclasm that has led to substantial publications, and lots of support along the way from a number of mentors. I now try to return that favour to my own students, and readers.