Andrew Beer is currently the Executive Dean, UniSA Business, a business school that holds full, five-year accreditation EQUIS and AACSB accreditation. Andrew completed his PhD at the Australian National University in 1989 and then worked for four years in the Australian Public Service. In 1993 he accepted a lectureship at Flinders University in Adelaide, where he worked for 17 years, before moving to the University of Adelaide for five years and then accepting the role of Dean of Research in the UniSA Business School (as it was then named) in 2015.
Andrew has been a member of the Regional Studies Association since (probably?) 2006 and has served on the Board for a number of years. Andrew engages very actively with colleagues within the Regional Studies Association, publishing with RSA colleagues from around the globe including Professor Jiří Blažek (Charles University Prague); Dr Alessandro Sancino, (Open University, Reading); Professor Markku Sotarauta, (Tampere University); Professor David Bailey, (University of Birmingham); Dr Fiona McKenzie, (RMIT University); Professor Sarah Ayres, (University of Bristol); and Professor Terry Clower, (George Mason University).
Key insights:
- academic life has become a global enterprise, the RSA empowers you to operate on a global stage, even when you live on the edge of the ecumene
- go to as many conferences as you can to learn, and to network
- have fun with your academic writing and enjoy the flow of ideas
Current projects:
Andrew is currently working on a number of projects including Future Work, Future Communities a large-scale five-year project funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partners to the value of $3.4m. This project examines the labour market and community impacts of the closure of Australia’s car industry, and we recently completed our first wave of our longitudinal survey of retrenched works, achieving just under 1250 responses. Learn more here – https://fwfc.com.au/
A second project is funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute on Growing Australia’s Smaller Cities to Better Manage Population Growth. The purpose of this Inquiry is to answer two overarching questions. First, what is the possible role that Australia’s smaller cities can play in managing national population growth, including international and national migration? Second, which policy instruments and programs are most likely to redirect population movements to these locations?
A third project is funded by the Collaborative Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies (CRC Time) and it focuses on Post Mining Land Use – Practice Mapping Options. This project will enable industry, governments and researchers to understand ‘net optimisation’ of post closure value – where both risk and opportunity are considered. It considers the feasibility and possibilities of post-mining outcomes in a regional, national and global context, and examines the ‘do-ability’ of different repurposing options. It will set out the framework that enables more detailed research projects that follow and it will determine the collaborations required to implement beneficial outcomes across major mining regions.
Publications:
I am very much looking forward to the publication I jointly edited with Markku Sotaruata entitled the Handbook of City and Regional Leadership to be produced by Edward Elgar. This edited volume includes many contributions from RSA members.