Dr. Harrington joined the University
of Washington faculty in September 1997, moving from "the other Washington,"
metropolitan Washington, D.C. There, he was a founding member of
the faculty in The School of Public Policy
at George Mason University, established
in 1990 to organize an interdisciplinary doctoral program in public policy.
Previously, he was a faculty member in the Geography
department of the University at Buffalo
(State University of New York). From 1994-97 he also served as director
of the Geography
and Regional Science program in the National
Science Foundation, overseeing the program's (then) $4 million annual
budget for research grants.
Dr. Harrington's field is economic geography, especially the economic development of sub-national regions. His research, writing, and teaching have focused on: industrial location in general; the ways in which producer-service activities (e.g., engineering, legal, or accounting services) affect regional economic development; the regional bases and impacts of international trade and foreign investment; and most recently, occupational attainment and skills development in regional labor markets (who gets trained for what jobs, through what means, and how does this vary across places?). With Dr. Barney Warf (Florida State University), Dr. Harrington has published a book on industrial location and regional development (Industrial Location: Theory, Practice, and Policy, available through Routledge publishers).
At the University of Washington, Dr. Harrington works with students and colleagues in the investigation of the social and institutional bases of economic geography, and in aspects of commercial geography. His regular courses survey economic geography (Geography 207), international trade and investment (Geography 349), the uses of geographic information and GIS, and the role of technology in regional economic development (see Geography 567). He has directed the Department of Geography's graduate program, and became department chair in July 2000.
During the years 1994-97, Dr. Harrington served on the Council and as Secretary of the Association of American Geographers. He also served on the Rediscovering Geography committee of the National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council, which produced the report Rediscovering Geography: New Relevance for Science and Society (this can be ordered from the AAG). From 1993-2000, Dr. Harrington was executive director of the North American Regional Science Council, a non-membership organization that exists to further the study of regional science (and its membership organizations such as the Regional Science Association International) in North America. He is the past-chair of the Economic Geography Specialty Group of the AAG, and serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Economic Geography.
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