Dr. Hans Westlund is born in 1957. Since 2007, he is Professor in Regional Planning, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, and Professor in Entrepreneurship, Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping, Sweden. He received a PhD in Economic History from the University of Umeå, in 1992.
His involvement with Regional Science activities and institutions is multifaceted and long-lasting. He acted as Chairman of the Local Organisation Committee for the European Regional Science Association’s (ERSA) legendary 50th Anniversary congress, in Jönköping 2010. 2006-2014 he served as Member of the European Organising Committee of the European Regional Science Association. Since 2005, he has also been member of the board of directors of the Western Regional Science Association, for which he served as president 2013/14 and became lifetime Fellow 2018. He has served as Councillor-at-large of the Regional Science Association International, RSAI and he has been chairing ERSA’s Epainos Prize Committee and the WRSA’s Tiebout Prize Committee.
Beyond Regional Science, he is member of the Swedish Prime Minister’s National Innovation Council; co-editor of the Springer book series Advances in Spatial Science; member of the China Urban Science Research Association’s Resilience City Expert Committee; and member of the International Geographical Union’s Commission for Agricultural Geography and Land Engineering.
Among all his commissions, he has been a member of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation´s Sector Committee for Research on the Civil Society; chairman and founder (together with Professor Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Kyoto University) of the International workshop “Social Capital and Development Trends in Japan´s and Sweden´s Countryside”; member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry’s Committee for Rural Development; and member of the Swedish research council Formas’ Scientific Council. Together with co-author Tigran Haas, he was given the Routledge Best Book Award 2018 for the book In the Post-Urban World, which also has been translated to Japanese.
His research interests include urban and regional development, social capital, innovation, entrepreneurship, and peripheral and rural regions.