Working Lives Research Institute
Professor of European Integration and Globalization
Allan.Williams@surrey.ac.uk
Allan studied Economics and Geography at University College Swansea, 1969-72, before completing his PhD at the LSE. He was also a part time regional course tutor for the Open University in London in this period, and a part time lecturer in the Planning Department at South Bank Polytechnic. After completing his doctoral thesis, he worked as a Research Fellow at the LSE on the 'Change in Urban Britain' project, funded by the Department of the Environment. In 1976-8 he was a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Durham.
In 1978 he moved to the Geography Department at the University of Exeter, where he was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and then, from 1995, Professor of Human Geography and European Studies. During this period he worked at different times on rural housing issues, the political economy of tourism, and international migration/mobility. He maintained his interests in Southern Europe, but from the mid 1990s focused more on Central Eastern Europe, while also writing on broader themes of European integration. He was Co-Director of the Centre for European Studies 1987-95, and established and co-ordinated its MA in European Studies, 1989-95. He also jointly established an MSc in Tourism, Development and Policy at Exeter in 2000.
He was appointed to the Chair in European Integration and Globalization at London Metropolitan in 2006. He is a member of both the Institute for the Study of European Transformations, and the Working Lives Research Institute.
In the broader social science arena, he is an Academician of the Academy of Social Science (http://www.acss.org.uk/), and has been a member of several Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) committees including: the Research Grants Board 2001-5, and the 'One Europe or Several' Commissioning Panel, 1997-9. He chaired the ESRC/NERC Transdisciplinary Seminars competition in 2005, was vice chair of the ESRC First Grants Commissioning Panel in 2006, and is currently a member of the Commissioning Panel for CASE Studentships.
He is an Adjunct Professor in the National Centre for Research on Europe, at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where he is developing a research programme on European-New Zealand migration (http://www.europe.canterbury.ac.nz/).
Within the Royal Geographical Society with the IBG, he has been Chair of the Annual Conference in 2005, Chair of the Research Groups Sub-Committee, 2004-6, a Member of Research Committee, 2004-6, and a Member of Council, 2005-6. He was awarded the Heath prize of the Royal Geographical Society in 1995 for his research on Europe.
Journals.
He is co-editor of two journals: European Urban and Regional Studies (http://eur.sagepub.com) and Tourism Geographies (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14616688.asp). And he is a member of the editorial boards of three other journals: Mobilities, Annals of Tourism Research and Perspectives on European Politics and Society.
Allan's central research interests are the relationships between economic development and mobility. He is particularly interested in international labour migration and return migration, cross-border mobility, and tourism. The substantive focus of this research includes economic transactions, employment, skills and knowledge transfers, as well as risk. He has undertaken research in a number of European countries, but especially in Central Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the UK.
He also undertakes research in the fields of tourism development, and more recently on the sustainability implications of the impacts of human mobility on environmental systems.
Current or recent research projects:
Allan has written or edited, singly or jointly, 25 books including the following:
95 in total including
‘Low cost carriers, economies of flows, and regional externalities’, Regional Studies 43(5) 677 – 691 (with V Balaz).
‘Knowledge Transfer and Management in Tourism Organisations: an emerging research agenda’, Tourism Management 30 (3) 325–335 (with G Shaw)
‘The determinants of retail productivity: a critical review of the evidence’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 11(2); ????, with Anon, D., Clegg, J., Deniz, O., Grugulis,
‘International migration, uneven development and polarisation: an introduction’, European Urban and Regional Studies 16(3): 309-322
'Knowledge Sharing through Face-To-Face Communication and Labour Productivity: Evidence from British Workplaces,' British Journal of Industrial Relations in press, with
International mobility, learning and knowledge transfer: a case study of Slovak doctors. Social Science and Medicine, 67: 1924-33
‘Path dependency and path creation perspectives on migration trajectories: the economic experiences of Vietnamese migrants in
‘Listen to me, learn with me: International migration and knowledge’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 45(2): 361-82
‘International labour migration and tacit knowledge transactions: a multi-level perspective’, Global Networks 7(1): 1-22
‘Lost in translation? International migration, learning and knowledge’, Progress in Human Geography 30(5): 588-607
‘Older migrants in
'Winning then loosing the battle with globalization: Vietnamese petty traders in
'What human capital, which migrants? Returned skilled migration to
'International labour mobility and uneven regional development in
'Been there, done that': international student migration and human capital transfers from the
'From private to public sphere, the commodification of the au pair experience? Returned migrants from
'Temporary versus permanent youth brain drain: economic implications', International Migration v42(4): 3-34 (with Vladimir Baláz and Daniel Kollar) ·
'European voices: towards the internationalisation of academic discourse', European Urban and Regional Studies v11(4): 355-356 (with Ray Hudson)
'Trans-border population mobility at a European crossroads:
'European migration: flows, structures and regulation', International Journal of Population Geography v8(2): 83-87. (with Gabriella Lazaridis)
'La movilidad internacional en Europa Central: turistas, comerciantes y migrantes', Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales v18(1): 37-66 (with Vladimir Baláz).
'The Czech and
'International petty trading: changing practices in trans-Carpathian
'From collective provision to commodification of tourism?', Annals of Tourism Research v28(1): 27-49. (with Vladimir Baláz)
'Coming and going in
'Border regions and trans-border mobility:
'Privatisation and the development of tourism in the
'Tourism and migration: new relationships between production and consumption', Tourism Geographies v2: 5-27 (with Michael Hall).
'The well being of British expatriates resident in southern
'Tourism and international retirement migration; new forms of an old relationship in southern
'The geography of tourism production: uneven development and neglect', Tourism Geographies, v2(3): 241-263. (with Sheela Agarwall, Rick. Ball, and Gareth. Shaw)
Also 81 chapters in books.