Meenu Tewari

Meenu Tewari is Professor of Economic Development in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill, and Director of the department’s Economic Development Specialization. She is interested in the political economy of development, local industrialization, skill formation and upgrading within regional and global production networks. Her work focuses comparatively on developed and developing countries. An ongoing project focuses on cross-border mobility and the economic transformation of mature industries. Drawing on field work in the furniture and textile industries in North Carolina, the project examines how global competition and recent changes in these sectors have restructured the region’s manufacturing base, employment structure, worker skills, incomes and trade patterns. A related project examines the emergence of local food clusters in North Carolina and how they are inserted within the wider agriculture and retail economy. Other projects examine the shifting prospects for workers and labor market institutions in low wage industries in developing countries. Her research has been published in several journals including, World Development, Competition and Change, Environment and Planning A, Oxford Development Studies and Global Economy Journal. Her latest article is, “Footloose capital, intermediation and the search for the high road in low wage industries,” in Labour in Global Production Networks edited by Anne Posthuma et. al., 2010, Oxford University Press, New Delhi and Oxford.