Personal Information

Biography

Thematic and conceptual expertise:

• Regulation and public service delivery;
• Regulatory tools and institutions;
• The learning city-region: governance for cross-sectoral development;
• Urban renaissance: what makes for successful urban regeneration
• Sustainable urban development: planning, infrastructure, innovation.

 

Current position:

• Head of Division, Regulatory Policy, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. Supervises country reviews, thematic studies on regulatory impact analysis, administrative simplification, regulatory agencies, risk and regulation, public services and public-private partnerships.

 

Urban renaissance and learning city-region studies:

• Melbourne, Glasgow, Belfast, Krakow, Canberra, Kitakyushu; Jena; Copenhagen-Malmö; Poitiers; London and Kent;

           

Country reviews:

•  Switzerland, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico; Sweden; Russia; China.

 

Past positions:

•  Urban Affairs and Policy, OECD, 1992-2003:
•  Professor of History, Michigan State University, 1973-1992.

 

Academic achievements:

• As a historian, Konvitz specialised in early modern and modern European history, the history of science and technology, and urban history.   He wrote four books and over thirty articles, including Cartography in  France, 1660-1848: Science, Engineering and Statecraft (University of Chicago Press, 1987) , which was awarded the Nebenzahl Prize by the Newberry Library, and “The Crisis of Atlantic Port Cities, 1880-1920,” (Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1994) which was awarded Best Article Prize by the Urban History Association. A member of the Board of Editors of the Journal of Urban History, Konvitz served as guest editor of a special issue on the subject of the megalopolis (1993). Konvitz was a Scholar in Residence in urban studies at the University in Glasgow , and in early modern history at the University of Minnesota. In addition, he was honored with a visiting professorship from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He received a Fellowship for Independent Study and a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. 

 

Education:

• Konvitz received the BA with Honors in History from Cornell University in 1967, and the PhD from Princeton University in 1973.

History

Member for

1 year 9 weeks