Justin O’Connor

Justin O’Connor is Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia and visiting Chair in the School of Cultural Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University. He has held professorships at Monash University, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Leeds, and is a former Director of the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. He also helped establish and was first chair of Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS), the UK’s first dedicated local economic development agency for the creative industries. Justin led the team which established Manchester’s first Creative Quarter - the Northern Quarter. Between 2012 and 2018 he was a member of the UNESCO 2005 Convention’s Expert Facility, supporting cultural policy development in Mauritius and Samoa.

Recent articles by Justin O’Connor

Show us the money! APU’s Australian Universities Accord response (Part 1)

Show us the money! APU’s Australian Universities Accord response (Part 1)

The Australian Universities Accord Final Report (the Final Report) was made publicly available on 25 February 2024 by the Federal Minister for Education, the Hon. Jason Clare MP. It contains 47 recommendations for the reform of Australia’s higher education system over the next few decades. As one of us noted shortly after the Accord’s interim report was published on 20 July 2023, that document provided little cause for optimism that either the Accord panel or Minister Clare were particularly concerned with addressing the systemic problems that currently plague Australia’s dysfunctional, inequitable and authoritarian higher education system.