Justin O’Connor, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South Australia and Visiting Professor, School of Cultural Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Between 2012-18 Justin was a member of the UNESCO ‘Expert Facility’, supporting the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity. Previously he helped set up Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) and has advised cities in Europe, Russia, Korea, Vietnam and China. Under the UNESCO/EU Technical Assistance Programme he has worked with the Ministries of Culture in both Mauritius and Samoa.

Justin is the author After the Creative Industries: Why we need a Cultural Economy (2016) and co-editor of the 2015 Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries and Cultural Industries in Shanghai: Policy and Planning inside a Global City, (2018). He has published Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China (2020) and co-edited Re-Imagining Creative Cities in Asia (2020). His new book, based on the work of the Reset Collective, Art, Culture and the Foundational Economy is due out with Manchester University Press in 2023.

Sarah E.K. Smith, Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture and Global Relations; Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University; NACDI Team Member

Sarah’s research and curatorial projects address contemporary art, with a focus on exhibitions, museums, and cultural policies. Current projects encompass topics from contemporary video art and artists’ labour unions to the international circulation of exhibitions, curatorial networks, and cultural diplomacy. In 2015, Sarah was the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. Additionally, she has held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.