Prof. Justin O’Connor

Professor – Monash University

Justin O’Connor is Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy at Monash University. He is also visiting Professor in the School of Media and Design, Shanghai Jiaotong University, where he jointly runs a Global Cultural Economy research hub. He heads the new MFJ research unit Culture Media Economy and is program leader for the Master of Cultural Economy. He is part of the UNESCO ‘Expert Facility’, supporting the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity, a board member of Renew Australia and convenes the Global Cultural Economy Network.

Justin has three ARC Discovery projects: UNESCO and the Making of Global Cultural Policy: Culture, Economy, Development, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific; Working the Field, a study on graduate careers of creative arts programs in Australia and China in the arts and cultural industries; Urban Cultural Policy and the Changing Dynamics of Cultural Production – focusing on the relationship between the cultural sector and making/ manufacture in Melbourne, Sydney, Berlin, Shenzhen, New York and Los Angeles. He is also CI on an ARC Linkage Project on the impact of MONA on the local city and state cultural economy in Tasmania. In 2013 he completed another LP Creative Clusters, Soft Infrastructure and New Media: Developing Capacity in China and Australia, partnered with Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Justin produced a research paper on the cultural economy for ACOLA’s Australian Comparative Advantage program. Previously he helped set up Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) and Forum on Creative Industries (FOCI), a national advocacy group on behalf of local and regional authorities. He has recently produced a report of the creative industries for the Tasmanian State Government.

Under the UNESCO/EU Technical Assistance Programme he worked with the Ministry of Culture in Mauritius to develop a national cultural industries strategy, and the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture, Samoa, to link their cultural industries strategy to the 2005 Convention.

O’Connor is the author of the 2016 Platform Paper After the Creative Industries: Why we need a cultural economy, and is finalising a book on Cultural Economy in the New Shanghai. He is co-editor of the 2015 Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, and with Rong Yueming (2018) Cultural Industries in Shanghai: Policy and Planning inside a Global City. London, Intellect.