Professor, Simon Fraser University (Geography)
Associate Faculty Member SFU Sociology and Anthropology & SFU Centre for Global Political Economy. Editor, Geography Compass. Investigator with UK-based Imagining Urban Futures research programme.
[http://www.sfu.ca/~emccann/].

BIO

Professor McCann’s broad research interests focus on urban drug policy, urban policy mobilities, urban development, and urban politics, and the relationships between urbanization and globalization. In particular he is interested in the spatial practices and political strategies of groups involved in producing urban policies. His work includes a focus on ‘Urban Policy Mobilities’ – how urban policy actors (broadly defined to include politicians, policy professionals, consultants, and activists, among others) interact globally as they produce, disseminate, and adopt policies. Conceptualizing these ‘policy mobilities’ entails an investigation of the role of expertise, spatial imaginaries, and numerous apparently mundane practices, such as calculation and communication, in shaping global circuits of policy knowledge. It is also concerned with the varied and often micro-scale spatialities in and through which policies travel – including conference interactions, fact-finding visits, and email communications. Finally, it focuses on the urban political implications of policy transfer, focusing on how policy models are framed, deployed, and struggled over in cities.