| Honorific Suffix: | FBA FAcSS |
| Birth Name: | Gordon Leslie Clark |
| Birth Date: | 10 September 1950 |
| Nationality: | Australia, United Kingdom |
| Occupation: | Geographer, economist, academic, consultant |
| Period: | 1977-present |
| Senior Consultant and Emeritus Professor | |
| Education: | Ph.D., DSc (Oxon) |
| Alma Mater: | McMaster University |
| Thesis Title: | Regional unemployment and policy analysis: geographical study of Canadian federal unemployment policy |
| Thesis Url: | https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/12260 |
| Thesis Year: | 1978 |
| Academic Advisors: | Michael Dear, Leslie J. King, and Atif Kubursi |
| Discipline: | Geography, economics |
| Sub Discipline: | Environmental geography, economic geography |
| Workplaces: | Oxford's Smith School |
| Main Interests: | The behaviour of investors, long-term sustainable investment, the design of investment institutions, corporate governance, institutional decision-making |
| Boards: | Avida International |
Gordon Leslie Clark,[1] FBA FAcSS (born September 10, 1950)[2] is an Australian economic geographer, academic, and consultant. He is former Executive Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford (2013-2018)[3] [4] with cross appointments in the Saïd Business School and the School of Geography and the Environment.[5] Clark's latest work focuses on the geographical structure and performance of financial markets and organisations. He wrote and co-wrote multiple books in these subjects, including The Geography of Finance (OUP 2007), Sovereign Wealth Funds (Princeton 2012), and Institutional Investors in Global Markets (OUP 2017).
Clark has a BEcon and MA in Geography from Monash University, a DSc and an MA in Economic Geography from Oxford, and a PhD in Economic Geography from McMaster University.[6]
Clark's first academic post was in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design. He then held an appointments at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School and Monash University (1989-1995).
Having been the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford, he was appointed Executive Director of the Smith School in 2012. He has been an advisor to companies on issues such as long-term environmental performance. With Zurich Insurance, he led a team of Oxford academics on a 6 year-long consultation on individual behavior and risk and uncertainty in household decision-making. Clark holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Edmund Hall, Oxford,[7] was the Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics and was a visiting professor at Stanford University.
Clark sits on the advisory board of Avida International, and has been an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the National Research Council.[8] At the Harvard Kennedy School he led faculty and student-based consulting projects with governmental organisations, and at Oxford, he has advised major corporations on their global environmental performance.
In 2020, IP Group appointed Clark as the Chair of its Ethics Committee, which was established to oversee the company's Ethical Investment Framework. He is also a member of its ESG Committee.[9]
Initially, his research was on regional economics, patterns of employment and unemployment, and the market forces driving geographical and economic differentiation. He is the co-author of Regional Dynamics: Studies in Adjustment Theory (Allen & Unwin, 1986) and the author of Unions and Communities Under Siege (CUP, 1988). He has also published research on political theory as represented by State Apparatus with Michael Dear (Allen & Unwin 1982) and the role of judicial decision making in the development of American cities. He is the author of Judges and the Cities (University of Chicago Press, 1984).
At Oxford, he has promoted research in economic geography and finance and is a co-editor of the leading handbook in the field: The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography (1st Edn. 2000; 2nd Edn. 2018). He is also the author of many books and papers on savings behaviour and financial institutions including Pension Fund Capitalism (OUP 2000), European Pensions and Global Finance (OUP 2004), and Saving for Retirement (OUP 2012). He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Pensions and Retirement Income (OUP 2014). In recent years, his research has focused on the geographical structure and performance of financial markets and organisations found in books such as The Geography of Finance (OUP 2007), Sovereign Wealth Funds (Princeton 2012), and Institutional Investors in Global Markets (OUP 2017).
In 2005, Clark was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA),[10] and in 2014 received an honorary doctorate from the Panteion University of Athens. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award by McMaster University, and the Chancellor’s Medal of the University of California–Santa Barbara.[11]