Biography

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose holds the Princesa de Asturias Chair and is Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he has taught since 1995. He directs the Cañada Blanch Centre at LSE and was Head of the Department of Geography and Environment between 2006 and 2009.

Between 2022 and 2024 he chaired the European Commission’s High-Level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy. Its report, Forging a sustainable future together: Cohesion for a competitive and inclusive Europe, was presented in Brussels in February 2024. It makes the case for a place-sensitive Cohesion Policy after 2027. With a budget of €392 billion for 2021–2027, Cohesion Policy is the largest development policy in the world.

He was President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) from 2015 to 2017, after serving as its Vice-President in 2014. He was also Vice-President (2012–2013) and Secretary (2001–2005) of the European Regional Science Association. He is Visiting Professor of Innovation at the Centre for Innovation Research of the University of Stavanger, Norway. He has held visiting posts at the College of Europe, the University of Cambridge, the University of Hannover, the University of Split and the Autonomous University of Madrid.

His research spans regional growth and inequality, trade, innovation, institutions, fiscal and political decentralisation, migration, discontent and populism. He also works on development and industrial policy. The work is widely cited. In the 2026 Stanford/Elsevier list of the world’s most cited scientists he ranked 441st across all disciplines. He has been the most cited scholar in urban and regional planning in five of the last six editions. Clarivate has named him a Highly Cited Researcher every year since 2020, one of some 260 researchers so recognised in the social sciences.

The research also travels into policy. He has advised several Directorates-General of the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD, the International Labour Organization, UNCTAD, the United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Development Bank of Latin America, the Asian Development Bank, the African Union and the Cities Alliance. He has sat on high-level groups advising European Commissioners on innovation, productivity, growth, employment and development.

In 2025 he received the Sir Peter Hall Award for lifetime contribution, the highest accolade of the Regional Studies Association. He won the ERSA Prize in Regional Science in 2018. He has held a European Research Council Advanced Grant and a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award. Earlier distinctions include a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Royal Geographical Society’s Gill Memorial Award, the last two for his work on regional disparities and development. He holds honorary doctorates from Utrecht University and Jönköping University.

His books include The Dynamics of Regional Growth in Europe (Oxford University Press, 1998), The European Union: Economy, Society, and Polity (Oxford University Press, 2002), Local and Regional Development (Routledge, 2006; second edition 2017), Innovation and Regional Growth in the European Union (Springer, 2011), Technology and Industrial Parks in Emerging Countries (Springer, 2014) and La vendetta dei luoghi che non contano (Donzelli, 2025). Several have been translated into Chinese, Italian and Spanish. He has published more than 270 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

He was an editor of Economic Geography from 2010 to 2025 and remains on its editorial board. He sits on the boards of more than fifty other journals in economic and human geography, regional science, political science and management. He edited Environment and Planning C between 1999 and 2016, as joint chief editor from 2008, and was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geographical Systems from 2019 to 2021.

Career

• 2020–Princesa de Asturias Chair, LSE
• 2004–Professor of Economic Geography, LSE
• 2006–2009Head of the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE
• 2002–2004Reader in Economic Geography, LSE
• 2000–2002Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography, LSE
• 1995–2000Lecturer in Economic Geography, LSE
• 1996–2006Founder and Director, MSc in Local Economic Development, LSE
• 1994–1995Research Director, Cabinet for Planning and Spatial Development, Galician Regional Government