Biography

BSc (Bristol 1971) MSc (Bristol 1974)
Professor of Economic Geography and former Editor of Regional Studies (1997-2002)

Mick Dunford graduated with degrees in Geography (1st Class Honours) and Quantitative Economics (with Commendation) from the University of Bristol. He has been at Sussex since 1973. He is an Honorary member of the Società Geografica Italiana. In 1997 he was appointed Editor of Regional Studies (1977-2002) and has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Espaces et Sociétés, Sciences de la Société and Economic Geography. In 2000 he was elected to the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, and in 2003 was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Edward Heath Award for geographical research in Europe.

He has given two University of Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science Studies courses (1994 and 1998). He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Toulouse, Pavia, Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne and Sciences-Po in Paris. In 2009 he was a Visiting professor in the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

Since 1998 he has also given courses and been an invited contributor to conferences in Rennes (EUROSTAT), Tuzla in Bosnia-Hercegovina , Brussels (European Parliament), Vienna, Berlin, Bilbao, Banja Luka in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Strasbourg (Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe), Natal, São Carlos, Campinas, Rio de Janeiro, Aix-en-Provence, Eisenerz in Austria, Ankara in Turkey, Varese, Caserta, Rome, Salerno and Naples in Italy, St Petersburg, Moscow, Aveiro, Naxos, Paris, Chambéry, Angers, Lyon, Rome, Florence, Naples, Tampere, Galway, Coimbra, Recife, Brasilia, Beijing, Shanghai and Guilin, amongst many other places, as well as numerous conferences and workshops in the UK.

He is the author of Capital, the State and Regional Development (Pion, 1988), and Rhône-Alpes in the 1990s (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1991), and co-author with Diane Perrons of The Arena of Capital (Macmillan, 1983 and with Lidia Greco of After the Three Italies (Blackwell, 2006). With George Benko he has co-edited Industrial Change and Regional Development (Belhaven, 1991) and with Grigoris Kafkalas Cities and Regions in the New Europe: the Global-Local Interplay and Spatial Development Strategies (Belhaven, 1992). He has also published numerous papers and chapters on uneven development in Europe.

In the last ten years his research has focused first on Italian regional evolutions and value chain research, and, subsequently, on relations between Europe and China and a number of Chinese development issues. In 2008 he was involved in the preparation of a report on regional policy in the EU and China whose origin lay in his participation in an EU-China policy dialogue that started in 2006. Current research deals with trade and industrial and regional development in China and the European Union and rural economic development in disaster-affected and poverty areas in China. At a more theoretical level he is working on regulation-theoretic approaches to the implicatiosn for global development of economic crises in the western world and the rise of China. 

Fuller details of his publications are provided in the recent publications list and on his publications page.

His main research interests are in the economic, urban and regional geography, regional and urban economic development, inequality and social cohesion in Europe (east and west) and its Mediterranean neighbours, and most recently in China. thematic interests are in the role of corporate strategies, market forces and regulatory regimes at scales from the local to the international in shaping the map of economic development. Much of his research is predicated on a political economy approach, with a strong interest in theories of regulation, though he also has research skills in econometrics, the use of relational databases and GIS. His most recent publications arise out of an ESRC project on Regional Economic Performance, Governance and Cohesion in an Enlarged Europe in which he was Principal Researcher and a new project on the regional implications of international trade in China and Europe. Alongside a volume written with Lidia Greco entitled After the three Italies: creating wealth and inequality (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), he has published papers on the evolution of the motor vehicle, steel and textile and clothing industries.

In the recent past he has was a Director of the EU-funded Rives Manche Economic Observatory. He also worked with a team of economists from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and the UK on a major EU research contract to examine the effects on social cohesion of EU industrial, agricultural, research and other policies. Another project concerned the impact of the ESPRIT programme on cohesion. His current plans are to establish with colleagues at Sussex and Nottingham and international collaborators an EU-China project.

See also: Current Research and Publications

Mick Dunford has given two courses in University of Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science Studies (1994 and 1998). He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Toulouse, Pavia, Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne and Sciences-Po in Paris. In 2010 he was Visiting Professor at the Institute for Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. In 2011-13 he will spend a further one year at CAS.

At Sussex he recently contributed to the first year Human Geography course and a second-year interdisciplinary course entitled Measuring Development. At present he teaches a first-year Geographies of Development and Inequality course, contributes to a second-year course on the Transformation of Contemporary Europe and final year and graduate courses on Industrial Change and Regional development. In China he taught a course on Quantitative Methods and Modelling Urban and Regional Development. In the past he has also taught statistics and has contributed to GIS courses at Susses. In addition he is supervising/co-supervising some ten doctoral students writing theses on a range of regional and industrial development issues in countries as varied as Brunei, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela.

Dunford, Mick (2012) Regional Inequality in the EU: How to Finance Greater Cohesion. European Planning Studies, 20 (6). pp. 895-922. ISSN 0965-4313

Dunford, Michael, Lee, Kyoung Hoon, Liu, Weidong and Yeung, Godfrey (2012) Geographical interdependence, international trade and economic dynamics: the Chinese and German solar energy industries. European Urban and Regional Studies, 20 (1). pp. 14-36. ISSN 1461-7145

Dunford, Michael and Li, Li (2011) Earthquake reconstruction in Wenchuan: Assessing the state overall plan and addressing the 'forgotten phase'. Applied Geography, 31 (3). pp. 998-1009. ISSN 0143-6228

Dunford, Mick (2011) Financing solidarity: matching resources and responsibility through the budget for European Cohesion Policy and Member State financial arrangement. In: Chinese and European cohesion and regional development policies. Unset.

Li, Li, Dunford, Michael and Yeung, Godfrey (2011) International trade and industrial dynamics: geographical and structural dimensions of Chinese and Sino-EU merchandise trade. Applied Geography, 32 (1). pp. 130-42. ISSN 0143-6228

Dunford, Michael and Yeung, Godfrey (2011) Towards global convergence: Emerging economies, the rise of China and western sunset. European Urban and Regional Studies, 18 (1). pp. 22-46. ISSN 09697764

Dunford, Mick (2010) Area definition and classification and regional development finance: the European Union and China. In: Routledge handbook of local and regional development. Routledge, pp. 527-548. ISBN 9780415548311

Dunford, Mick (2010) Structuralism. In: Encyclopedia of geography. SAGE Publications. ISBN 9781412956970

Dunford, Mick (2010) Chinese spatial inequalities and spatial policies. Geography Compass, 4 (8). pp. 1039-1054.

Dunford, Mick (2009) Port-industrial complexes. In: International encyclopedia of human geography. Elsevier Science, pp. 285-294. ISBN 9780080449111

Dunford, Mick (2009) Regional inequalities. In: International encyclopedia of human geography. Elsevier Science, pp. 236-245. ISBN 9780080449111

Dunford, Mick (2009) Globalization failures in a neo-liberal world: the case of FIAT Auto in the 1990s. Geoforum, 40 (2). pp. 145-157. ISSN 0016-7185

Dunford, Mick (2009) Regional development models. In: International encyclopedia of human geography, twelve-volume set. Elsevier Science, pp. 192-201. ISBN 9780080449111

Dunford, Mick (2008) After the three Italies the (internally differentiated) North-South divide: analysing regional and industrial trajectories. Annales de géographie, 6 (664). pp. 85-114. ISSN 0003-4010

Dunford, Mick (2007) Quelles conséquences pour les territoires européens ? Le développement économique régional en Europe depuis 1950. L'Information Géographique, 71 (4). pp. 68-99. ISSN 0020-0093

Dunford, Mick (2007) Desenvolvimento territorial, bem-estar e crescimento: razões em favor das politicas regionais. In: Políticas de desenvolvimento regional: desafios e perspectivas à luz des experieências de União Européia e do Brasil. Ministry of National Integration, pp. 53-78.

Dunford, Mick (2007) Sviluppo economico e divisione territoriale del lavoro: il caso FIAT. Quaderni di Sociologia. ISSN 0033-4952

Dunford, Michael and Greco, Lidia (2007) Geographies of growth, decline and restructuring: the rise and fall (privatization) of the state-owned steel sector and the trajectories of steel localities in the Italian Mezzogiorno. European Urban and Regional Studies, 14 (1). pp. 27-53. ISSN 0969-7764

Dunford, Mick (2007) Textbooks that moved generations [Review] Chris Pickvance (ed; 1976) Urban sociology: critical essays. Progress in Human Geography, 31 (4). pp. 537-49. ISSN 0309-1325

Dunford, Michael and Greco, Lidia (2006) After the Three Italies: Wealth, Inequality and Industrial Change. Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Book Series . Blackwells. ISBN 1405125209

Dunford, Michael (2006) Industrial districts, magic circles and the restructuring of the Italian textiles and clothing chain. Economic Geography, 82 (1). pp. 27-59. ISSN 0013-0095

Dunford, Mick (2005) Winners and losers: the new map of economic inequality in the European Union. In: Regions and regionalism in Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 9781843761273

Dunford, Mick (2005) Policy debates: growth, inequality and cohesion: a comment on the Sapir Report. Regional Studies, 39 (7). pp. 972-978. ISSN 0034-3404

Dunford, Mick (2005) Old Europe, New Europe and USA: comparative economic performance, inequality and the market-led models of development. European Urban and Regional Studies, 12 (2). pp. 151-178. ISSN 0969-7764

Dunford, Michael and Smith, Adrian (2004) Economic restructuring and employment change. In: East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The post-socialist states. Pearson-Prentice Hall, pp. 33-58. ISBN 0130182524

Dunford, Mick (2004) The changing profile and map of the EU textile and clothing industry. In: European industrial restructuring in a global economy: fragmentation and relocation of value chains. Goettingen, SOFI Berichte. ISBN 9783884310076

Dunford, Mick, Graz, Jean-Christophe, Palan, Ronen and Van Der Pijl, Kees (2003) Die neue Dominanz der USA: Imperiale Regulation statt Global Governance? Weltwirtschaft, Ökologie und Entwicklung.

Dunford, Mick, Graz, Jean-Christophe, Palan, Ronen and van der Pijl, Kees (2003) Comment reguler le capitalisme?

Dunford, Michael (2003) Theorizing regional economic performance and the changing territorial division of labour. Regional Studies, 37 (8). pp. 829-854. ISSN 0034-3404

Dunford, Michael, Perrons, Diane, Reilly, Barry and Bull, Rebecca (2002) Citations, authors and referees: Regional Studies, 1981-2002. Regional Studies, 36 (9). pp. 1053-1065. ISSN 0034-3404

Dunford, Mick (2002) Italian regional evolutions. Environment and Planning A, 34 (4). pp. 657-694. ISSN 0308-518X

Dunford, Mick (2002) Les nouvelles voies de la solidarité. Pouvoirs Locaux. p. 5.

Smith, Adrian, Rainnie, Al, Dunford, Mick, Hardy, Jane, Hudson, Ray and Sadler, David (2002) Networks of value, commodities and regions: reworking divisions of labour in macro-regional economies. Progress in Human Geography, 26 (1). pp. 41-63. ISSN 0309-1325

Dunford, Michael, Hall, Ronald, Smith, Alasdair and Tsoukalis, Loukas (2001) Introduction. In: Competitiveness and cohesion in EU policies. Oxford University Press, pp. 1-28. ISBN 9780198295228

Dunford, Mick (2001) Regional inequality in the EU: the roles of distribution and growth. In: Regional policies in Europe: Key opportunities for regions in the 21st century. Institute of Geography and Regional Science, University of Graz: Leykam, Graz, Austria. ISBN 9783701100330

Smith, Adrian, Rainnie, Al and Dunford, Michael (2001) Regional trajectories and uneven development in 'the new Europe': rethinking territorial success and inequality. In: Interlocking dimensions of European integration. Palgrave, pp. 122-144. ISBN 0333802969

Dunford, Mick and Smith, Adrian (2000) Catching up or falling behind: Economic performance and regional trajectories in an enlarged Europe. Economic Geography, 76 (2). pp. 169-195. ISSN 1468-2702

Dunford, Mick (2000) A globalização e as teorias da regulação. In: Globalização e desigualdade. Natal: A S Editores.

Dunford, Michael, Louri, Helen and Rosenstock, Manfred (2000) Competition, competitiveness and enterprise policies. In: Competitiveness and cohesion in EU policies. Oxford University Press, pp. 109-146. ISBN 0198295227

Dunford, Michael (1998) Differential development institutions modes of regulation and comparative transitions to capitalism: Russia the Commonwealth of Independent States and the former German Democratic Republic. In: Theorizing transition: the political economy of post-Communist transformations. Routledge, pp. 76-109. ISBN 9780415162678

Dunford, Mick (1997) Divergence instability and exclusion: regional dynamics in Great Britain. In: Geographies of economies. Holder Education, pp. 259-277. ISBN 9780340677162

Dunford, Michael (1996) Disparities in employment productivity and output in the EU: The roles of labour market governance and welfare regimes. Regional Studies, 30 (4). pp. 339-357. ISSN 00343404