Ian Stone, Professor Emeritus

Contact Details: i.e.stone@durham.ac.uk 

After studying at the universities of Leicester (BA), Simon Fraser (MA) and Cambridge (PhD), Ian became lecturer/senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington (NZ), Newcastle and Sunderland, and reader/economics professor at Northumbria and Durham (from 2003). He was visiting fellow/professor at HEC Montreal, Plymouth University and UK Commission for Employment & Skills, is a fellow at Grey College, and long-term mentor to entrepreneurship centres at Södertörn University, Sweden, and Cracow University of Economics, Poland.  

He launched/directed three research centres: Northern Economic Research Unit at Northumbria, and Policy Research Group and Centre for Entrepreneurship at Durham. These undertook policy studies in business development, labour markets and entrepreneurship for the UK and other governments and agencies (incl. UK Trade & Investment, HM Treasury, UK Cabinet Office, Turner Commission and ONE North-East), as well as companies (incl. Microsoft). He initiated and (with Andrew Hunt) developed the North-East Economic Model and was an Experts Panel member for the UK Sector Skills Development Agency. Ian’s work found practical application in government policies, including training levies, collective training measures, social entrepreneurship research centres and regional planning.  Internationally, he advised the governments of Canada, Denmark and Chile, the European Parliament and OECD, and delivered management training to the European Commission (DG10) and Cracow University of Economics.

His teaching at Durham focused upon entrepreneurship and new venture creation.  He developed a range of undergraduate, MSc and MBA courses, linked to a student enterprise competition incorporating an incubator and funding programme and received both DUBS and University teaching excellence awards. He has published some sixty academic journal articles and books/chapters and (with his team) around ninety official reports.  As Professor Emeritus at Durham, his new book is a sports history study of a leading coach: Alec Nelson and British Athletics prior to WWII: A Professional amongst Gentlemen (Cambridge Scholars, 2023). He has also revisited the topic of his seminal 1984 CUP book on British Indian irrigation in a chapter for the new Cambridge Economic History of South Asia.