My research straddles multiple fields including economic geography, innovation economics and labour economics. Through my research, I try to understand why some regions are so much more prosperous than others, in particular with reference to the creation of high-quality employment in diverse places and for different population groups. In my research, I rely on large-scale administrative and survey datasets, often at the individual or firm level. I also study policies that aim to foster regional growth and reduce inequalities within and between regions, and how such policies can be evaluated. 

During the 2024/25 academic year, I am a British Academy Innovation Fellow at the Evaluation Task Force in the Cabinet Office. The project aims to improve the evaluation of local growth policies, increase capacity and capability of local government organisations in England to evaluate, and strengthen the evidence base for local growth policy. 

I am also working on a projected funded by the Productivity Institute on labour mobility, knowledge diffusion and productivity growth. Other current projects include research on the role of digital technologies for survival of small and medium sized businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic; a mixed methods study on the role of innovation intermediaries in regional innovation systems; a book chapter on the activities of Big Tech companies on regional economies in the United States; and a paper on the spatial inequality and path dependency of technology production.