ABOUT

I am the Director of the Future Regions Lab, and Associate Professor of economic geography at the School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia. Prior to becoming an academic, I worked as an economic development consultant and Japanese/English interpreter. I have lived and worked in Australia, USA, Indonesia and Japan. My work balances fundamental research with applied outputs to inform economic development strategic policy and decision making across all levels of government.

I examine the (re)distribution of resources (mining, energy, innovation, wealth) and the urban and socio-economic factors increasing competitiveness (productivity/innovation) and mitigating uneven development. I seek to bridge the disciplines of economic geography and urban studies via qualitative (interviews, surveys) and quantitative (social network analysis, statistics) techniques applied to understand competitive advantage at the global economy, industry and community levels. This multi-scale approach is novel and challenging, but well-placed to generate insights on the dynamics of socioeconomic systems.

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I have won several large competitive industry grants, at a high level this includes Australian Research Council (ARC) early career fellowship (DECRA) and Discovery Project grants in 2017. I am Deputy Chair for the Australian Academy of Sciences National Committee for Geographical Sciences, on the editorial board for the journals of Geographical Research, Progress in Economic Geography, Applied Geography and Global Networks. I am also the national co-convener of the Institute of Australian Geographers Economic Geography Study Group. I have published widely in leading scholarly journals, book chapters, as well as produced numerous government and industry reports.