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School of Geography

Professor Adrian Smith

Adrian

Honorary Professor of Human Geography

Email: a.m.smith@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Adrian Smith specialises in the economic geography of the world economy with a focus on employment, global production and trade integration; global value chains and sustainable development; and the relationships between work, ecology, sustainable development and food security.

He recently completed terms as Deputy Vice-Principal (Research Excellence), Deputy Vice-Principal in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Dean for Research.

As Deputy Vice-Principal (Research Excellence), Adrian was the academic lead for Queen Mary’s preparations for, and submission to, the Research Excellence Framework (2021). As Deputy Vice-Principal (Humanities and Social Sciences), he was a member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences executive team, deputising for the Faculty Vice-Principal, and had responsibility for leading the Faculty’s preparations for and strategy relating to the REF2021 submission across eleven Units of Assessment, as well as other strategic projects.

Prior to taking on these roles, Adrian undertook two three-year terms as Dean for Research  (Humanities and Social Sciences), with responsibility for leading the Faculty’s research strategy, developing inter-disciplinary research across nine academic units, and co-ordinating the Faculty’s Research Excellence Framework preparations and strategy. Before this he was the Senior Academic Lead for Queen Mary’s submission to REF2014, when a top 10 position among the U.K.’s multi-faculty HEIs was achieved. Between 2007 and 2011 he served a four year term as Head of the School of Geography during which time the School was ranked equal first in RAE2008.

He is Editor-in-Chief of European Urban and Regional Studies, was Vice President for Research and Higher Education of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in 2007, and received the Royal Geographical Society’s Gill Memorial Award in 2003.

Adrian’s main research and teaching interests are in economic geography and sustainable global economic integration; employment, global production networks and international trade policy; and macro-regional integration and the restructuring of global value chains in post-socialist East-Central Europe and North Africa. He was trained in economic geography and development studies, and his interests continue to focus on the relations between uneven development and political economy, but his work continues to be inter-disciplinary and collaborative. He is a founder of the Centre on Labour and Global Production at Queen Mary University of London, in conjunction with colleagues in the School of Business and Management, and has co-ordinated a number of international, multi-disciplinary research projects funded primarily by the Economic and Social Research Council, the US National Science Foundation, and the British Academy. He has supervised a range of PhD research projects in economic geography and in collaboration with business and management schlolars. From January 2022 he has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to work on a project on food security, employment and techno-science in the value chains of glasshouse horticulture.

Key recent publications:

Editorial responsibilities:

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