Alan Harding
Visiting Scholar
Alan Harding is an IMFG Visiting Scholar. He is Chief Economic Adviser at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and a visiting Professor at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research in the Alliance Manchester Business School. He oversees the analytical work that supports GMCA’s research and intelligence, strategy development and evaluation efforts. Most recently, he was centrally involved in the production of the Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review, a major collaborative initiative with leading academic experts designed to provide the evidence base for one of the UK’s first modern local industrial strategies. Previously, Alan spent 30 years in academia leading specialist research Institutes and Centres in the north of England, focusing on urban-regional development, policy, and governance. He is best known for his role in re-establishing the importance of the city-region as a scale for policy design and delivery in England.