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You are here: Centre for Research on Social Inclusion >> People >> Robert Fagan

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BA PhD ANU              

Chair of Human Geography

Deputy Director, Centre for Research on Social Inclusion

Office :	E7A607
Phone :	61-(0)2-9850 8392
Fax :	61-(0)2-9850 6052
email :	rfagan@els.mq.edu.au

 

 

 

Profile

I am a human geographer researching and teaching in the areas of economic geography, urban and regional development and social theory. I have been professor of human geography at Macquarie since 1994 and deputy director of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion since its creation as a university centre at the end of 2005. My research career has focused on industrial change in developed countries including Australia, concentrating since the early 1990s on regional and local impacts of globalisation and theorising geographical scale. I am currently researching:

• impacts of global change on producers, workers and consumers in Australian food industries including the banana industry 
• globalisation and local labour markets especially changes in people’s access to employment
• economic and cultural resistance to globalisation involving local and community enterprises, trade unions, producer and consumer associations.

These three areas straddle two of CRSI’s research clusters, mostly ‘Inclusion and Exclusion in Urban and Regional Spaces’ but also ‘Critical Theory and Social Hope’ through my work on local social movements. All my research deals with aspects of social inclusion and exclusion in the context of globalisation.

I have worked as a consultant on regional and local impacts of global change for federal, state and local governments, trade unions and community groups. Growing up in Canberra I studied economics and geography at the Australian National University before undertaking doctoral research in their Research School of Pacific Studies on interactions between large corporations and governments in the first Australian mineral boom. Appointed first to Macquarie in 1972, I have worked on secondment for the NSW Department of Planning, as research fellow in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and as a visiting professor at the universities of Durham, Portsmouth and Sydney.

 

External Appointments

President, Institute of Australian Geographers (1998-2000)

Member, National Committee for Geography (2004-2006)

Member: editorial advisory board: European Urban and Regional Studies (continuing).

 

Awards

2001  Macdonald Holmes Medal of the Geographical Society of NSW and the Geography Teachers Association of NSW for distinguished contribution to geographical education.

2004  J.P. Thomson Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland for distinguished contributions to Geography in Australia

 

Grants Awarded (selected)

ARC Discovery Grant (2006-2007): ‘New Regionalism and the Dynamics of Local Economies’; with Prof. M. Taylor and Dr M. Tonts ($90,000)

Macquarie University Research Centre Grant (2005-2009): Centre for Research on Social Inclusion; with Ass.Profs N. Smith and M. Fine, Dr A. Wise ($150,000)

 

Macquarie University Visiting Scholar Fellowship (2006) ‘Geographies of Globalisation, Neoliberalism and Development’, Associate Professor Katharine Rankin, University of Toronto; with Dr K. Lloyd et al., ($7,700)  

Macquarie University Visiting Scholar Fellowship (2006) ‘Reconsidering the scale politics and policies of urban and regional development’ Professor Andrew Jonas, University of Hull; with A/Prof. R. Howitt ($7,700)

 

ARC Discovery Grant (2003-05): ‘Geographies of Resistance to Globalisation’; with Dr S. Sharpe ($90,000)

Research Infrastructure Block Grant (2004) ‘Spatial Data Analysis Facility’; with Dr R.Dowling, A/Profs R.Howitt and J.Forrest ($20,000)

 

Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (2003): ‘Employment Structure and Profile of Western Sydney’; with Drs R. Dowling and J. Langdale ($42,000)

 

ARC Large Grant (2001-2003): ‘Globalisation and Food Commodity Chains in the Asia-Pacific Region’; with Dr W. Pritchard and Prof. D. Burch ($85,000)

 

Macquarie University Visiting Scholar Fellowship (2002) ‘Sydney as a Global City’, Dr Donald McNeill, Kings College London; with Dr R. Dowling ($7,300)    

 

ARC Large Grant (1997-1999): ‘Globalisation and Localisation in Labour Markets: Western Sydney’ ($85,000)

 

National Greenhouse Advisory Committee (1991-9996) to establish the Climatic Impacts Centre; with Professors A. Henderson-Sellers, P. Curson and R. Blong ($285,000)

 

Publications (selected)

Books

Forthcoming. with P. Krinks. The Australia-Philippines Banana War: Contesting Geographical Scale. Ashgate, Aldershot.

2004. with R. Dowling and J. Langdale. An Employment Profile of Greater Western Sydney: Suburbs in the Global City. Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, Blacktown.

1999. with M. Webber M. Global Restructuring: the Australian Experience. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

1997. with I. Burnley, P. Murphy and R. Fagan. Immigration and Australian Cities. Federation Press, Sydney.

Journal Articles

2006. 'Bananas in Chains? Reflections on global commodity chains and labour movement regulatory initiatives', Employment Relations Record, 6(2): 31-46.

2006. with P. O’Neill. 'Geographical takes on three decades of economic reform in Australia', Geographical Research, 44(2): 205-20.

2005. with S. Sharpe and M. Hynes. 'Beat me, Whip me, Spank me, Just Make it Right Again: beyond the didactic masochism of global resistance', Fibreculture, 6: 1-12.

2005. with R. Dowling. 'Neoliberalism and suburban employment: Western Sydney in the 1990s', Geographical Research, 43(1): 71-81.

2005. with D. McNeill and R. Dowling R. 'Sydney/Global/City: an exploration', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(4): 935-44.

2004. 'Globalisation and the Death Sentence', Australian Geographical Studies, 42(3): 404-6.

2004. D. Sadler. 'Australian trade unions and the politics of scale: reconstructing the spatiality of industrial relations', Economic Geography, 80(1): 23-43.

2002. 'Dealing with the New Prosperity: implications for work and workers', Australian Geographer, 33(3): 353-8.

1999. with W. Pritchard. 'Circuits of capital and transnational corporate spatial behaviour: Nestlé in Southeast Asia', International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 8: 3-20.

Book Chapters

2005. 'Globalization, the WTO and the Australia-Philippines “banana war”', in N. Fold and B. Pritchard (eds.) Cross-Continental Food Chains. Routledge, London.

2003. 'Labour geographies', in B. J. Garner (ed.) Geography’s New Frontiers. Geographical Society of NSW, Sydney.

2000. 'Industrial change in the global city: Sydney's new spaces of production', in J. Connell (ed.) Sydney: The Emergence of A World City. Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

1999. with Le Heron R. 'Reinterpreting the geography of accumulation: the global shift and local restructuring', in J. Bryson et al. (eds.) The Economic Geography Reader. John Wiley, Chichester.

Conference Papers

2005, September. ‘Geography, work and scale’, International Research Roundtable: ‘Working Space’, Department of Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney.

2005, February. ‘Bananas in chains? Reflections on global commodity chains and labour movement regulatory initiatives’, Workshop on Supply Chain Strategies, GROWES, University of Western Sydney.

2004, July. ‘Local Impacts of the Global: Re-scaling the Australian Economy’, J.P. Thomson address, Geographical Society of Queensland, Brisbane.

2004, April. ‘Globalisation and The Death Sentence’, Institute of Australian Geographers Conference, Adelaide.

2004, April. with S. Sharpe and M. Hynes. ‘The uneasy marriage of truth and politics: a case of virtual geographies’, Institute of Australian Geographers Conference, Adelaide.

2003. with S. Sharpe and M. Hynes M. ‘Political action and the play of appearances: theorising the political implications of a comic event’, in P. Corrigan et al. (eds.) New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Proceedings of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), University of New England, Armidale.

2003, December. ‘Suburbs in the “global city”: labour markets in Western Sydney since the mid 1990s’, State of Australian Cities National Conference, Parramatta.

2003, November. ‘Neoliberalism, globalisation and the suburbs: Western Sydney in the 1990s’, IAG Economic Geography Study Group and Rural Studies Study Group, joint conference: Neoliberalism and Australia’s Regions, Newcastle.

2003, October. ‘Globalisation, the WTO and ‘banana wars’: implications for Australia and Asia-Pacific’, Conference on Cross-Continental Food Commodity Chain Systems, Institute of Geography, University of Copenhagen.

2003, September. with D. McNeill and R. Dowling. ‘Sydney/Global/City: an exploration’, Institute of British Geographers Conference.

2003, June. with R. R. Dowling and J. Langdale. ‘Western Sydney Employment Study: Profile Report’, ReVisioning the Greater West, Greater Western Sydney Regional Planning Conference.

2002. with P. M. O’Neill and D. W. Sadler. ‘Local labour culture, trade unionism and the difference of place: BHP and its steelworks at Newcastle and Port Kembla, New South Wales’, in P. Holland, F. Stephenson and A. Wearing (eds.), 2001, Geography – A Spatial Odyssey, Proceedings of the Third Joint Conference of the New Zealand Geographical Society and Institute of Australian Geographers, NZ Geog. Soc. Conference Series no. 21, Dunedin.

2002, July. ‘Bananas in chains? Globalisation, labour relations and the United States-European Union banana dispute’, Institute of Australian Geographers Conference, Australian National University.

2001, December. ‘Bananas: introduction to a research project’, Agri-Food IX, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

2001, November. ‘Industrial Relations meets Human Geography (1): space, place and the making of scale in labour geographies’, joint symposium of Economic Geography Study Group of the Institute of Australian Geographers and University of Sydney's Work and Organisational Studies Discipline, University of Sydney.

2001, November. ‘Implications for Work and Workers’, Conference: Dealing With The New Prosperity – An Interdisciplinary Examination of Urban and Regional Issues on the NSW Eastern Seaboard, CURS, University of Newcastle.

2001, January. ‘Political construction of geographical scale: restructuring Australian industrial relations’, 3rd Joint Conference, New Zealand Geographical Society and Institute of Australian Geographers, Dunedin.

2000, December. with D. Sadler. ‘Australian trade unions and the political construction of scale: contesting legislative reform’, paper delivered to International Conference of Economic Geography, National University of Singapore.

2000, May. ‘Rescaling industrial relations in Australia: political construction of geographical scale’, seminar, Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

2000, January. with D. Sadler. ‘Australian labour unions and the politics of scale: re-constructing the spatiality of power’, Institute of British Geographers Conference, Brighton.

 

 

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