Dr John Gibney, Birmingham Business School, UK

Dr John Gibney

Birmingham Business School, UK

John is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Birmingham Business School. He joined the University of Birmingham following an influential career in city, regional and cross-border economic development in the UK and mainland Europe.

John was a founding member of the RSA international research network on sub-national (place) leadership, the RSA Research Network on Leadership and Urban and Regional Development (2015-2018)

The strategic support of the RSA from the very beginning, along with the individual research network grants awarded, have been crucial in enabling the development and impact of our (place) leadership research community over the last 15 years. This inter-disciplinary community of researchers continues to develop new spatially contextualised perspectives on leadership in diverse sub-national environments that are helping to improve understanding(s) and explanation(s) of the dynamics of leadership in these unique types of settings. I think the RSA leadership research community is uniquely qualified to uncover and explain the ever-evolving interdependent relationships between human agency and all the geographies. By bringing together good evidence-based research and education and teaching activities, our growing international RSA leadership research community is also informing approaches to (place) leadership education and development for a new generation of city and regional leaders. The RSA is well-placed to advance debate beyond the prevailing fashion for celebrity and appearances. Now, more than ever, thoughtful, and rigorous scholarship is required to move beyond puzzlement to better understand what generative approaches to the conceptualisation and the enactment of leadership look like – and could look like – and the difference they can make to the realisation of progressive outcomes at the sub-national scale.

Currently, with colleagues at the University of Birmingham, John is researching the relationship(s) between leadership, governance and change in the Anglo-France-Belgium borderlands. Publication of the findings of this research is planned for early 2027.

Publication outputs from the RSA-funded (place) leadership Research Network seminar series included the 2022 Regional Studies Policy Debates Best Paper Award for Brexit disruption and trans-border leadership in Europe, Gibney, J., Liddle, J., & Shutt., J. (2021) ,Regional Studies, Vol. 55 (9), pp.1596-1608.

The RN also published two themed Regional Studies Special Issues:

Sotarauta, M., Beer, A., & Gibney., J (eds) 2017, ‘Making Sense of Leadership in Urban and Regional Development‘, Regional Studies, Vol. 51 (2), pp. 187-193.

Gibney, J, Liddle, J, Shutt, J. & Sotarauta, M. 2025, ‘Understanding leadership in city and regional development: Towards multiple perspectives of sub-national (place) leadership‘, Regional Studies, Vol. 59 (1).