About
Ann Markusen, professor emerita, directs the Humphrey School's Project on Regional and Industrial Economics. Currently, her research focuses on occupational approaches to regional development, and on artists, arts organizations, cultural industries, and cultural activity as regional economic and quality-of-life stimulants.
Before joining the Humphrey School, Markusen was State of New Jersey Professor of Urban Planning and Policy Development at Rutgers University. She has held faculty positions at Northwestern, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado. Markusen has been an economic policy fellow with the Brookings Institution and a research economist with the office of the Michigan Speaker of the House. She was a Fulbright Lecturer in regional development economics in Brazil and has written on European, Korean, and Japanese regional economies as well as on North American cities and regions.
From 1995 to 2002, she served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and in 2002, as a Visiting Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Markusen recently served three years as the Harvey Perloff Chair in the Urban Studies Department at UCLA and is currently serving a six year term as A. D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University. In 2010-11, she occupied the prestigious UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Glasgow School of Art, working out of its Urban Lab. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project.
Markusen served six years on the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy and as chair from 1998 to 2000. She was elected president of the North American Regional Science Association in 2000. In 2001-02, Markusen served as a member of the President's Commission on Offsets in International Trade. She won the McCoy Award from the American Collegiate Schools of Planning in 2005, and the Prestigious Alonso Prize in regional science in 2006.
She holds doctorate and master degrees in economics from Michigan State University and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Recent Publications
- California's Arts and Cultural Ecology
- Nurturing California's Next Generation Arts and Cultural Leaders
- Arts and Culture in Urban/Regional Planning: A Review and Research Agenda
- Creative Placemaking
- Los Angeles: America's Artist Super City
- Native Artists: Livelihoods, Resources, Space, Gifts
- Reining in the Competition for Capital
- Crossover: How Artists Build Careers across Commercial Nonprofit and Community Work
- Artists' Centers: Evolution and Impact on Careers, Neighborhoods, and Economies
- Artistic Dividend: The Arts' Hidden Contributions to Regional Development
- The Artistic Dividend Revisited
- The Artistic Dividend: Urban Artistic Specialization and Economic Development Implications
- The Case for a Substantial Minimum Wage Hike for Minnesota
- The Case Against Privatizing National Security
- The Distinctive City: Divergent Patterns in Growth, Hierarchy and Specialization
- Fuzzy Concepts, Scanty Evidence, Policy Distance: The Case for Rigour and Policy Relevance in Critical Regional Studies
- Gauging Metropolitan "High-Tech" and "I-Tech" Activity
- Human versus Physical Capital: Government's Role in Regional Development
- Occupational Advantage: Detecting and Enhancing Occupational Mix in Regional Development
- Regional Occupational and Industrial Structure: Does the One Imply the Other?
- Sticky Places in Slippery Space: A Typology of Industrial Districts
- Targeting Occupations in Regional and Community Economic Development
- Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from the Study of Artists