I am a Professor of Urban, Regional and International Economics at the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.

My research interest lies in the areas of creative production and regional as well as international trade. My research has touched on several subfields of economics such as agglomeration of economic activity to migration, peer effects, innovation, auctions and art markets to international trade of goods and services, in particular, the role of virtual proximity for global integration. My most recent research projects deal with regional trade as well as historic creative production.

I am an empirical economist and I like working with novel datasets based on which a certain economic, cultural or societal aspect can be quantified and thereby understood better. I have published in journals such as the European Economic Review, Journal of International Money and Finance, Empirical Economics, Applied Economics Letters, and the Journal of Cultural Economics.

I received my PhD from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, my M.A. from University College Dublin, Ireland, and my B.Sc. in Economics from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. Before I was appointed to Dortmund I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Hamburg, Germany and a Post-Doc at the University of Heidelberg.

My colleagues from Technical University Dortmund, the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Ruhr Universität Bochum and I have successfully acquired a major research grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a doctoral research training group on “Regional Disparities and Economic Policy”.  

I currently serve on the Board of the Association of Cultural Economics International and the academic advisory board of the Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (ARL)

Next to my research I greatly enjoy policy work on regional development and transformation, speaking engagements and mentoring.