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Professor Andy Jonas

Professor Andy Jonas

Professor of Human Geography

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Science and Engineering
  • School of Environmental Sciences

Qualifications

  • BA (Durham University)
  • MA
  • PhD

Summary

Andy Jonas is an urban political geographer whose research examines the politics of urban and regional development in the USA, Europe and China. Andy has a BA degree in Geography from Durham University in the UK and MA and PhD in Geography from The Ohio State University in the USA. He was recently listed among the world's top 25 most productive and cited scholars in the field of Geography and Urban Studies. Andy is regarded to be one of the world's leading proponents of the idea that city-regions have become key spatial instruments of state internationalisation and geopolitical strategy in what some suggest is a 'post-national' era of economic globalisation.

Andy has published well over 100 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Some of his better-known work has explored the politics of city-regionalism and metropolitan governance, the search for an urban 'sustainability fix' , and new spaces of labour control in capitalism. His books include: The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives Two Decades Later (SUNY Press, 1999); Interrogating Alterity (Ashgate, 2010); Territory, the State and Urban Politics (Ashgate, 2012); Urban Geography: A Critical Introduction (Wiley Blackwell, 2015); Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics (Routledge, 2018); and Handbook on Changing Geographies of the State: New Spaces of Geopolitics (Edward Elgar, 2020).

Andy's current research examines the geopolitics and imaginaries of city-regionalism, urban sustainability and climate governance, and the local development of an urban circular economy.

He has been a visiting scholar at universities in the USA, Canada, Finland, Australia and China.

Andy is actively involved as researcher, adviser and consultant for a range of urban regeneration and community economic development projects and activities in Hull as well as in cities in the UK, Europe and the USA. His research on conservation planning, suburban sprawl and regional planning and governance in Southern California in the 1990s and early 2000s informed regional planning processes, which today have set aside thousands of acres of otherwise potentially developable public and private land for nature conservation purposes.

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Book Chapter

Public-Private Partnerships in Denver, CO: Analysis of the Role of PPPs in the Financing and Construction of Transportation Infrastructure in the USA

Brady, S. A., Goetz, A. R., & Jonas, A. E. (2022). Public-Private Partnerships in Denver, CO: Analysis of the Role of PPPs in the Financing and Construction of Transportation Infrastructure in the USA. In S. Hakim, R. M. Clark, & E. A. Blackstone (Eds.), Handbook on Public Private Partnerships in Transportation, Vol. 1 : Airports, Water Ports, Rail, Buses, Taxis, and Finance (195-222). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83484-5_11

Journal Article

Small cities and towns in global city-centred regionalism: Observations from Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China

Jonas, A., & Li, Y. (in press). Small cities and towns in global city-centred regionalism: Observations from Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China. Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/27541223231157225

City-regionalism and (re)framing the urban question in China

Jonas, A., & Li, Y. (in press). City-regionalism and (re)framing the urban question in China. Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/27541223221116062

Re-evaluating the changing geographies of climate activism and the state in the post-climate emergency era in the build-up to COP26

Kythreotis, A. P., Howarth, C., Mercer, T. G., Awcock, H., & Jonas, A. E. (2021). Re-evaluating the changing geographies of climate activism and the state in the post-climate emergency era in the build-up to COP26. Journal of the British Academy, 9(s5), 69-93. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s5.069

Circularity as Alterity? Untangling Circuits of Value in the Social Enterprise–Led Local Development of the Circular Economy

Lekan, M., Jonas, A. E., & Deutz, P. (2021). Circularity as Alterity? Untangling Circuits of Value in the Social Enterprise–Led Local Development of the Circular Economy. Economic geography, 97(3), 257-283. https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.1931109

Research interests

Geopolitics and imaginaries of city-regionalism

Local development of the urban circular economy

The global financing of urban infrastructure

Local labour control regimes

Urban sustainability and climate governance

Race , segregation and urban development

Lead investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

A ‘New Civil Politics’ of Climate Change? An examination of contemporary climate communication, actions and policies in the UK

Funder

British Academy

Grant

£1,500.00

Started

1 September 2019

Status

Complete

Project

Global infrastructure public-private partnerships and the geopolitics of city-regions

Funder

RSA Regional Studies Association

Grant

£7,500.00

Started

1 November 2015

Status

Complete

Project

Alderman Kneeshaw Park: the replenishment of a neglected urban public space

Funder

Wellcome Trust

Grant

£3,504.00

Started

1 October 2021

Status

Complete

Co-investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

CiRcular Economy: SusTainability Implications and guidING progress

Funder

EC European Commission

Grant

£871,381.00

Started

1 January 2018

Status

Complete

Postgraduate supervision

Andy is happy to supervise a range of postgraduate research topics relating to his areas of research specialism, including

- city regionalism

- politics of urban and regional redevelopment

- urban infrastructure finance

- alternative economic spaces

- geographies of labour control and regulation

- urban sustainability and green forms of urban development

Completed PhDs supervised/co-supervised

- Enrico Tommarchi, A Critical Analysis of the Relation between Cultural Policies and Strategic Urban Planning in Port Cities (2021)

- Hesham Waddani, Urban Forests in Tripoli, Libya: Policies and Citizen Participation (2021)

- Mbali Pewa, Investigating the Sustainability of Waste Recycling in South Africa (2020)

- Hui Yang, The Evolution of Endogenous Traditional Industry Clusters: a Case Study of the Chinese Liquor Industry (2020)

- Samuel Ramsden, Supporting Pro-Environmental Behaviours in Deprived Urban British Communities: Who is Responsible and How Can it be Done? (2018)

- ?Muhammad Haji-Abdullah, Analysis of the Suitability of the Socio-Technical Transition to the Development of Low Carbon Transportation in Brunei Darussalam (2016)

- Sarinah Omar, Sungai Liang Industrial Park: can Brunei Achieve its Sustainable Industrial Development? (2016)

- Stephen Hall, Transportation and Low-Carbon Governance in City-Regions (2015)

- Erin DeMuynk, Farmers' Markets and Urban Sustainability, external committee member, University of Illinois, USA (2015)

- Marcela Mele, Suburban Development and Livelihood Strategies in Tirana City-Region (2011)

- Andrew Kythreotis, Sustainability Governance and Scalar Politics in the UK (2010)

- David Haigh, Social Enterprise and Alternative Economic Spaces in the UK (2009)

- Maksuder Rahman, Neighbourhood and Household Environmental Problems in Chittagong (2008)

- Felicity Powell, Social issues in UK Regional Planning (2005)

- Alison Williams, Technogeopolitics and Representations of the Pacific as US Territory (2005)

Current PhD supervisions

- Malgorzata Lekan, Social enterprise, alternative economic spaces and the circular economy

- Heather Rogers, Employment and skills in development of the circular economy

- Santiago Perez (University of Troyes, Frances), Territory, industrial ecology and the circular economy

- Renae Dyball, London Shocks: Histories and Geographies of Environmental Crisis in a Global City

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