Professor Justin O'Connor

Short biography 

Justin O’Connor is Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia and Visiting Professor at the School of Cultural Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University. Between 2012-18 he was a member of the UNESCO ‘Expert Facility’, supporting the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity. Previously he helped set up Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) and has advised cities in Europe, Russia, Korea, Vietnam and China. Under the UNESCO/EU Technical Assistance Programme he has worked with the Ministries of Culture in both Mauritius and Samoa. 

Justin is the author After the Creative Industries: Why we need a Cultural Economy (2016, Platform Papers) and co-editor of the 2015 Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries and of Cultural Industries in Shanghai: Policy and Planning inside a Global City, (2018, Routledge). He has published on China and East Asia, co-authoring Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China (2020, Intellect) and co-editing Re-Imagining Creative Cities in Asia (2020, Routledge) and Different Histories, Shared Futures. Dialogues on China and Australia (2022, Palgrave). His work with the Reset Collective resulted in a large working paper Reset: Art, Culture and the Foundational Economy, translated into Dutch as Reset: Een nieuwe start voor kunst en cultuur (A Newstart for Art and Culture. Amsterdam: Starfish Books, 2023). His latest Culture is Not an Industry will come out with Manchester UNiversity Press in 2024. 

Background 

I am a world leader in research into the cultural and creative industries (CCI), strongly associated with the view that these are ultimately cultural policy rather than industrial-economic questions. I combine historical and conceptual research with policy development, advocacy, and evaluation. I have published 5 authored books (plus 1 forthcoming), 6 edited volumes, and over 100 refereed articles, chapters and reports. My work has been translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, Finnish, Serbian, Russian, Chinese and Dutch. As Director of Manchester Institute for Popular Culture (MIPC) I was involved in policy development and research leadership in Manchester and the UK in the 1990s, and the early 2000s in the EU and Russia. My policy development work gained a global profile subsequent to my arrival in Australia in 2008. This is evidenced by my appointment to UNESCO’s global Expert Facility (2010-18), by keynote invitations across China, Taiwan and South Korea, and by commissioned work by state and federal governments in Australia. I am recognised in the global policy community via invited keynotes (over 100), invited university fellowships (e.g. Shanghai Jiaotong, Leeds, Brabant, Turku, Warwick, Manchester, Singapore, Tours) and commissioned reports (Finland, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Samoa, Mauritius, UNESCO). My combination of research and policy development within a truly global network, make me a world leader in the field, as evidenced by the invitation to address the UN’s Senior Management Group, chaired by Secretary-General Guterres, in 2022.

An early achievement (1990-2000) was to connect an emergent CCI agenda with both urban regeneration and popular culture, via an interdisciplinary combination of postmodern sociology, cultural studies and urban geography. In this I acted neither as a policy maker nor consultant but as public policy intermediary, conducting empirical and interdisciplinary research to change the ‘imaginary’ of the policy environment, leading to real world change. As Director of MIPC I worked with previously marginalised local actors to develop a new policy for an urban creative cluster (Northern Quarter) and a creative industry development service (CIDS) focused on small and micro-enterprises.

Between 2000-07 these real-world research-informed policy outcomes were networked across the UK, via the Forum on Creative Industries (FOCI), the UK’s leading CCI regional development network which I co-founded. This work was extended by leading a EU- funded (TACIS) project (2000-04) policy exchange between Manchester and St Petersburg, establishing a new creative industries agency in the Russian city. I led an EU-funded research project bringing together creative quarters across 8 cities (1997-9), leading to a major conference in 1999, and establishing MIPC as one of the leading CCI research centres in Europe. My work was recognised by being awarded two major UK (ESRC) funded research projects on CCI and urban economic development, leading to significant publications, including a commissioned highly cited (650) review of CCI literature.

After arrival in Australia in 2008, I developed a distinctive historical-critical view of CCI’s integration into innovation policy, and sought to place them within the longer-term political changes associated with ‘neoliberalism’. In a post-GFC world, I proposed that existent CCI policy was part of the problem and needed to change. I applied this to a major historical reconceptualization of arts and creative industries commissioned by the Australia Council in 2011, and a strategic analysis of the real challenges facing the Australian cultural sector commissioned the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) in 2014.

These research insights were then applied to specific cases. I was commissioned by the Tasmanian state government to produce an empirically informed new approach to supporting the cultural sector, leading to a major conference, Creative Island in 2017. My ARC Linkage investigated the impact of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) on Hobart/ Tasmania and organised an international symposium on culture and urban regeneration in collaboration with the State Government and Hobart City. My work as UNESCO expert on global cultural policy development included strategic reports to Mauritius and Samoa. My major research focus on China helped conceptualise CCI in non-western contexts and in relation to ‘globalisation’. Two ARC China-focused projects, and my visiting chair at Shanghai Jiaotong University positioned me as a recognised global leader in the field of Chinese CCI, with many articles, commissioned chapters, keynotes and a book length study of China in 2020. This work on non-western CCI informed my current ARC project on UNESCO and global cultural policy, and ongoing work with the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture’s research centre (VICAS).

Since 2020 I have developed a radically new approach to cultural policy, by founding the Adelaide-based Reset Collective (Reset 2021), which acts as a public policy intermediary to influence the broader policy conversation. We delivered 8 interdisciplinary seminars and a large conference in November 2021, and 6 seminars in 2022, 3 in Europe. The seminars, large conference, media interventions, and publications have had real impact in South Australia and at national level, where Reset’s work is regularly referenced. So far, this work has led to a commission for a public-facing book by Manchester University Press (Culture is Not an Industry), an invitation to address the UN’s Senior Management Group, and a series of high-level international seminars in Northern Europe leading up to a UNESCO’s major Mondiacult ’22 conference. I am now part of a global network promoting the addition of culture to the Sustainable Development Goals and have been asked to help develop the UN and UNESCO’s policy goal of culture as a global public good.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sussex