Prof N Wrigley
School of Geography, University of Southampton
Neil Wrigley has been Professor of Geography at the University of Southampton since 1991. His research on the geography of retail and consumption has focused on three themes.
- Public policy oriented contributions to debates surrounding the Competition Commission's Inquiry (2006-08) into competitive conditions in the UK groceries market in particular a parallel investigation to that conducted by the Commission of retail change in over 1,000 UK town centres and high streets focused on market entry and exit conditions in the small store sector.
- Internationally recognized research on transnational retail and the global economy which has explored the rapid globalization of retail capital since the mid 1990s, the management of international investment by retail transnational corporations, the organization of those firms across institutional and national divides, the impacts of transnational retail on host economies in East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, ethical trading initiatives, and the private-interest regulation of global supply chains by UK and US retailers. The host economy and trade policy impacts of transnational retail have become increasingly important issues to the governments of many developing countries and this has resulted in many invitations to give keynote presentations to national and international policy bodies e.g. recently to the Agricultural Trade Research Consortium in China, to the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa, and to the Ethical Trading Initiative and Institute of Development Studies in the UK
- Pioneering work on issues of food poverty, diet-related inequalities and food retail access in underserved low-income neighbourhoods in British cities. That research on so-called 'food deserts' (more precisely unsupportive local food environments), and the potential of retail-led urban regeneration in underserved markets is acknowledged as having established an agenda for related research in many countries and has resulted in invited presentations on the public policy implications of the work to the Parliamentary Food & Health Forum at the House of Commons, the British Retail Consortium, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Cambridge-MIT Institute, and the World Economic Forum.
