Keynote Speakers
Prof. Meric S. Gertler
Meric S. Gertler served as the 16th President of the University of Toronto from 2013 to 2025. He continues to hold an appointment at U of T as Professor in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the School of Cities, Professor of Geography & Planning, and Goldring Chair in Canadian Studies. Prior to becoming President,
he served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. During his term as President, Professor Gertler championed the university’s role as a city-building institution and leader in sustainability, for which it was recognized as the number one university in the world by QS World University Rankings: Sustainability in both 2024 and 2025. An expert on urban economies, local and national innovation policy, and the role of institutions in economic development, he has advised governments in Canada, the United States and Singapore, as well as the OECD and the European Union. He has authored or edited nine books and over 100 scientific publications. A graduate of McMaster University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, he is a Visiting Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford for the 2025-26 academic year. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal
Canadian Geographical Society, the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, President Gertler was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2015.
Prof. Huiwen Gong
Huiwen Gong is Professor of Innovation and Regional Studies at the School of Business and Law, University of Stavanger. She holds a PhD in Economic Geography from Kiel University, Germany, and was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow. Her research examines how regions and nations imagine, contest, and materialise their futures under conditions of sustainability transitions, technological change, and geopolitical reconfiguration. Her work integrates regional industrial path development, Sino-EU industrial dynamics, and the geography of innovation, with a particular focus on emerging cleantech production networks in China and Europe. Through extensive field research in China, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, she analyses how future-oriented visions of green growth, technological sovereignty, and regional prosperity are translated into concrete
investment, policy, and institutional change. Her current research investigates how Chinese and European actors are building battery value chains amid intensified geopolitical tensions, with particular attention to the local social, environmental, and economic implications of these future-making strategies. Huiwen is a founding editor and speciality editor of Progress in
Economic Geography and serves on the editorial boards of Economic Geography and Geoforum. She has published widely in leading journals including Progress in Human Geography, Economic Geography, Journal of Economic Geography, Technological Forecasting and Societal Change, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transition and so on.
As part of the organisation of this conference, the University of Birmingham is collecting income via registration fees and sponsorships on behalf of the
RegInnoPol 2026 organising committee.