Dr. Costas Spirou
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dr. Costas Spirou serves as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Previously, he was Senior Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Director of The Graduate School. In 2017, Spirou was named a Fellow by the American Council of Education (ACE), the nation’s premier higher education leadership development program and spent the 2017-2018 academic year at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has held academic appointments at numerous universities including as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Latino Studies of the University of Notre Dame (2009-2011) and a Research Fellow at the Center of Cultural Understanding and Change of the Field Museum in Chicago (2005-2010). He also holds a faculty position as a Professor of Sociology and Public Administration. His research interests and scholarship center on mayoral leadership, public policy, technology and political sociology, urban affairs and governance. He has also written about downtown revival, the politics of stadiums and convention centers, and urban tourism and sustainability. Spirou is currently completing a book manuscript titled Anchoring Innovation Districts: The Entrepreneurial University and Urban Change (under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press). He is also co-editing a book titled The Many Futures of Work: Interpretations, Contentions, Expectations that examines the technological, political, and economic sources of the gig economy, the impact of the rapidly changing labor economy, and ameliorative policy options. His most recent book is Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Remaking of Chicago (with D. Judd) was published by Cornell University Press in 2016. Other books include Urban Tourism and Urban Change: Cities in a Global Economy (Routledge, 2011), St. Charles: Culture and Leisure in an All-American Town (Arcadia, 2005) which received an Award of Merit by the Illinois Association of Museums, and It’s Hardly Sportin’: Stadiums, Neighborhoods and the New Chicago (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003, with L. Bennett). He has published numerous articles and chapters in academic journals and edited volumes.