About

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

I study cities, and specifically the spatial distribution of jobs and prosperity. Much of my current research investigates how and why economic opportunity in the United States has become so deeply geographically polarized and income unequal. Some of this work focuses on the role of technology, particularly innovations that are highly disruptive and rich in tacit knowledge. I’m also interested in how these technologies enter the world of work, both directly and through their wider impacts on workers outside of tech and on people who live in left behind places. At the same time, my team and I have built the first geographically-granular measures of wealth in the US, which demonstrate that inequality in communities’ wealth levels has grown much larger in recent decades than corresponding spatial income differences.

Another area I focus on is the economics of diversity. In particular, I am investigating the productivity impacts of ethnic- and gender-diverse teams, workplaces, and cities. My work in this area has quantified economic benefits of immigrant diversity in the US, and Norway. An ongoing project examines these themes in the context of the United Kingdom (details here).

For my study on Brexit and immobility, my co-authors and I won the 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. Back in 2013, I also won an Early Career Award from the Regional Studies Association.

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