Helen Lawton-Smith is Professor of Entrepreneurship, Department of Management, and is Director of the Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management Research, Birkbeck, University of London. She is an economic geographer and research career has focused on the links between entrepreneurship, innovation, public policy and regional development in national and international contexts. She is the Founder and Research Director of the Oxfordshire Economic Observatory (oeo.geog.ox.ac.uk) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. She was the Birkbeck PI in the European Union project ‘Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research’ (TRIGGER) (2014-2017).