About
Costas Spirou currently serves as Professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology and Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurial Strategies Officer for the University System of Georgia (USG). He also holds a faculty courtesy appointment in the Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Most recently, as Interim Chief Academic Officer for the USG, he led the system's academic enterprise serving approximately 365,000 students. In this role, he worked closely with USG's 25 public colleges and universities, overseeing numerous initiatives and units, including academic innovation, student success, faculty affairs, academic collaborative programs, enrollment management and student affairs, academic libraries, the Georgia Archives, and the Georgia Public Library Service that manages the state’s 410 public libraries.
Previously, Spirou served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Georgia College & State University, the state's designated public liberal arts institution. In 2017, he was named a Fellow by the American Council on Education (ACE) and over the years has held academic appointments at numerous institutions, including as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame and as a Research Fellow at the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change at the Field Museum in Chicago. His previous faculty positions include appointments at DePaul University, National Louis University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
His research focuses on higher education and economic development, urban governance, technology innovation districts and entrepreneurship, public policy and mayoral leadership. He has also written about downtown revival, stadium politics, and urban tourism. Spirou is currently completing a book titled The Overlooked Majority: Regional Universities and the Future of Public Higher Education (under contract with Oxford University Press), which argues that regional institutions are foundational to the values of American higher education, local economies, and democracy. His most recent books include Anchoring Innovation Districts: The Entrepreneurial University and Urban Change (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021) which focuses on innovation, higher education, economic development, and urban revitalization and the co-edited The Many Futures of Work: Rethinking Expectations and Breaking Molds (Temple University Press, 2021) that examines the technological, political, and economic sources of the gig economy, the impact of the rapidly changing labor economy, and ameliorative policy options. He is editor of the Johns Hopkins University Press Higher Education and the City book series.
Previous books include Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Remaking of Chicago (with D. Judd) published by Cornell University Press in 2016, Urban Tourism and Urban Change: Cities in a Global Economy (Routledge, 2011), St. Charles: Culture and Leisure in an All-American Town (Arcadia, 2005) which received an Award of Merit by the Illinois Association of Museums, and It's Hardly Sportin': Stadiums, Neighborhoods and the New Chicago (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003, with L. Bennett).
Spirou's activities have received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, the Library of Congress, the Ford Foundation and the Sam Walton Foundation. He has worked on projects with the University of Athens, Hassan II University Morocco, the University of Heidelberg, and Peking University.