Peter is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Southampton. Before that he was Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on economic geography and regional and urban economic development. His research focuses on geographies of labour, regional development, innovation, design and creative industries, and evolutionary economic geography. He has recently completed research projects on the geography of design agencies, social enterprises in urban areas, economic resilience and the impacts of recessions, and how city economies change through time.

Emil Evenhuis is a Research Fellow for the project. He is based at the School of Geography and Environmental Science of the University of Southampton. Before he started at Southampton in early 2018, he was a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge for the project ‘Structural Transformation, Adaptability, City Economic Evolutions' (www.cityevolutions.org.uk).

Emil studied Economics, Philosophy and Japan Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and graduated in 2004. He then worked for 7 years as an economic consultant in The Netherlands, acting as an expert and project manager on about 30 assignments, commissioned by governments at various levels (local, national and European), mostly regarding urban development and large infrastructure projects. He attained his executive Master of Public Administration (MPA)-degree from the Netherlands School of Public Administration in The Hague in 2010. In late 2011 he became a PhD-researcher at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University, and completed his thesis – entitled 'The Political Economy of Adaptation and Resilience in Old Industrial Regions: A Comparative Study of South Saarland and Teesside’ - in early 2016.

Emil's research is concerned with how cities and regions cope with economic change, and in particular with the role of institutions and policies within this. In other words: how many communities exercise (some) control over their economic affairs in a rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world? He is especially interested in how places deal with structural change (in particular deindustrialisation), and the continuing - but changing - role of manufacturing across regional economies.

Professor Ron Martin is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Cambridge. His main research interests include the geographies of labour markets; regional development and competitiveness; the geographies of money and finance; geographical economics; and evolutionary economic geography. He has published some 35 books and monographs, and 200 articles, on these and related themes. He is an editor on the Cambridge Journal of Economics; Journal of Economic Geography; Geographie, Economie, Society; International Regional Science Review; the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, and Economic Geography.

Ron is Principal Investigator of a major ESRC project on Structural Transformation and City Economic Evolutions, part of the ESRC's Urban Transformations Initiative.(2015-2018). He has also been involved in a number of major policy-orientated research projects for the UK government as well as the European Commission.

Richard is Professor of Economics and Deputy Dean (Research) in the Business School at Durham University. Before joining Durham University in September 2012, Richard held the positions of Alec Cairncross Professor of Applied Economics and Director of the Centre for Public Policy for Regions at Glasgow University. He previously worked at the Universities of Newcastle upon Tyne, Durham and Portsmouth in the UK and Waikato in New Zealand. He holds degrees from the Universities of Belfast, Lancaster and Kent.

He has published over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and books. He has undertaken a significant amount of public policy research, including extensive work for UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) involving acting as an External Advisor on Trade Development Activities and the Asia Task Force project. In 2012-13 he was a member of the BIS/Foresight Lead Expert Group that reported in October 2013 on ‘The Future of Manufacturing in the UK’; and a Special Advisor to the UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Currently he is a member of the ESRC Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN) Project Approvals Panel.

John is Associate Professor in Economics in the Business School, Durham University. He joined Durham in September 2013. Prior to joining Durham University, he worked as a lecturer at Swansea University, as a postdoctoral research assistant for the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the University of Glasgow and as a research assistant on the Impact of Higher Education Institutions on Regional Economies initiative at the University of Strathclyde. His main research interests are in policy evaluation, productivity analysis, spatial economics and labour economics.

Andy Pike is the Sir Henry Daysh Chair of Regional Development Studies at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) , University of Newcastle. Andy was Director of CURDS between 2010 and 2017. He was a Co-Director of the i-BUILD research centre between 2013 and 2018 and an Advisory Board Member of the ESRC, BIS and CLG What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth (2013-16). Andy has been a visiting professor at several international institutions and was editor of Regional Studies between 2005 and 2014.

Andy’s central research interest is the geographical political economy of local and regional development and the intersections between local and regional development and Economic Geography. He is engaged in work on the geographies of brands and branding, and collaborative work on evolutionary approaches and the geographies of financialisation.

His research builds upon close policy engagement and has informed local and regional development policy for international (e.g. European Commission, United Nations International-Labour Organization (UN-ILO), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), national (e.g. Government Departments – Business, Innovation and Skills; Communities and Local Government), regional (e.g. Local Enterprise Partnerships, Regional Development Agencies, trade unions, voluntary organisations) and local (e.g. Local Authorities, Development Agencies) organisations.