About

I am a Professor in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, as well as a member of its Innovation Policy Lab. I’m also a Visiting Senior Fellow in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

My research is focused on cities, in particular the growing role of location in shaping economic opportunity in high-income countries like the United States and Canada.

I currently lead the GEOWEALTH project, which is creating novel data infrastructure tracing where wealth is located in the United States. With these data, our team is investigating the mechanisms driving widening spatial wealth disparities, and exploring their broader societal implications. A parallel GEOWEALTH initiative for Canada is under development. In my other research, I am developing predictive tools for identifying breakthrough innovations; examining immigration’s impact on productivity and innovation in contemporary Britain; and investigating the deep drivers of our housing unaffordability crisis.

“Who gets left behind by left behind places?” recently won the 2024 Editor’s Choice Award at the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society. For our study on Brexit and residential immobility, my co-authors and I won the 2019 Understanding Society Paper Prize. In 2016, my work on the economic value of local social networks won the Urban Land Institute Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Economic Geography.

I serve on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economic Geography, as well as at Progress in Economic Geography. Between 2017 and 2021, I was an Editor at Regional Studies.

Cutting across my research interests, I’m interested in policy efforts to stimulate prosperity. I have advised governments and NGOs on issues of regional and international development, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and the World Bank.

Before joining U of T, I held academic appointments at Queen Mary, University of London; the University of Southampton; the London School of Economics; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I received my PhD from UCLA.

You can find my full CV here