Titles

• Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
• Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs, Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Biography

Anthony Howell is an assistant professor in public policy and management in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. Previously, he served on the faculty in the School of Economics at Peking University in Beijing for five years. Anthony served as a Fulbright scholar at the Lincoln Institute of Urban Development and Land Policy at Peking University, and held visiting research fellowships at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington D.C. and the Asian Development Bank in Manilla. Anthony received his PhD in Geography from University of California-Los Angeles and obtained MS degrees in both statistics and geography/GIS. His main research fields include urban-regional economics, economic development, labor migration and innovation with a focus on the Chinese economy. Anthony's research has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Urban Economics, World Development, Research Policy, Economic Geography, and Journal of Regional Science, among others. He received a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation of China to explore the role of geography, innovation and state support policies in promoting local development in China. He also served as a guest editor for a special issue on innovation and management for the Economic Modeling journal.  Anthony’s research interests are in a large way a natural extension of his own personal experiences facing issues of poverty and inequality in early childhood, and working full-time on the factory assembly lines in the auto industry during summers as a teenager. It was during these early years that he became interested in issues about labor and the nature of work, as well as issues related to race, poverty and inequality. As factory plants later began to close down in his hometown, he also developed an interest in urban and regional development issues. Anthony added an international dimension to his research interests during his collegiate years when he was able to successfully secure external grants and scholarships to engage in community and economic development projects in rural parts of western Ireland, impoverished neighborhoods in southern parts of Mexico, and restive multi-ethnic communities in northwestern China. In total, Anthony has spent more than five years living and working in the developing world.

Education

• PhD, Geography, University of California-Los Angeles, 2014
• MS, Statistics, University of California-Los Angeles, 2012
• BA, Chinese Language and Culture, Michigan State University, 2009
• MS, Geography/GIS, Michigan State University, 2009
• BA, Political Science, Michigan State University, 2007
• BA, International Development, Michigan State University, 2006

Expertise

• migration
• organizational behavior
• urban and environmental studies
• statistical modeling