Yudit Kiss is an independent economic researcher and author. She was born and educated in Budapest and is currently based in Geneva. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Karl Marx University of Economics (at present Corvinus University) of Budapest. Specialized in development economics, initially she carried out research on questions of economic and social development in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. From the early 1990s her main field of study was the transformation of East Central Europe, with a particular focus on the changes in the defense industry. Since 2015 her work focuses on the human consequences of social and political changes. She had research projects at the Institute of Social Studies and the Institute of World Economy of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Budapest), at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (México City), the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (Brighton), the UNU World Institute for Development Economic Research (Helsinki), the UN International Labour Office, the UN Research Institute for Social Development and the Small Arms Survey (Geneva) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Stockholm). She has been a Leverhulme and a MacArthur Foundation grantee. She is the author of six books, several book chapters, research publications and more than 70 articles written both for academic and general public.