Dr. Keith Debbage

Professor, Geography Department


Keith Debbage is a Professor of Geography at UNC-Greensboro with research interests in urban economic development. His specific research interests include airline route networks and how they shape regional economies, and the economic geography of the tourist industry. Dr. Debbage is also the author of over 60 research publications in book chapters, contracted reports and various academic journals including the Annals of Tourism Research, the Journal of Air Transport Management, the Journal of Transport Geography, Policy Studies Review, Regional Studies, Tourism Management, Transportation Quarterly, and Urban Geography. He co-edited a book titled The Economic Geography of the Tourist Industry in 1998 and was a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Surrey and the University of Northumbria in the United Kingdom in fall 2000.


Since the late 1990’s, Dr. Debbage has received numerous economic development grants and contract awards. Most recently, he completed the “Renewable Energy In North Carolina: The Potential Supply Chain” Report for the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University. Additionally, he authored the Burlington – Greensboro I-40/85 corridor study for the Greensboro Partnership and Alamance County Chamber of Commerce in fall 2007 and a co-authored study titled “The Triad Transport Logistics Inventory and Cluster Mapping Project” funded by the Greensboro Partnership. Earlier this year, he published the Greensboro State of the City Report funded by the Greensboro Partnership. In 2006, Dr. Debbage received a corporate gift from NewBridge Bank to develop a Transport Logistic Quotient Ranking and he was a subcontractor for HDR Engineering for the Heart of the Triad Land Use Transportation Study. Dr. Debbage also conducted three co-authored, funded land use corridor studies for the city of Greensboro Planning Department during the late 1990’s and a Triad biotechnology study funded by the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in spring 2005.


Dr. Debbage was appointed in 2007 to the UNC Tomorrow Scholars Council by UNC President Erskine Bowles. The UNC Tomorrow initiative is a 20-year strategic plan for the UNC system. In 2008 Dr. Debbage was selected as a GlaxoSmithKline Faculty Fellow in Public Policy with the Institute of Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University. He has been quoted in BusinessWeek, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and is an op-ed columnist for the Greensboro News and Record. Dr. Debbage received his PhD from the University of Georgia and his MA from the University of Surrey, England and the BSc from the University of Dundee, Scotland.


Dr. Debbage considers his most important contribution to be the dozens of graduate students he has mentored and advised that have successfully completed their doctoral dissertations or masters theses and developed productive careers in geography and related fields.


Curriculum Vitae (short) (30Kb)

Dr. Keith Debbage with his doctoral mentor, Dr. Ron Mitchelson,
and some of Dr. Debbage’s own doctoral students, September 2007


Left to Right:
Khaula Alkaabi (Department Head and Assistant Professor, UAE University), Suzanne Gallaway (Instructor, UNCG Bryan School of Business), Omer Omer (Instructor, UNCG Bryan School of Business), Dr. Keith Debbage, Dr. Ron Mitchelson (Professor, ECU), Augustin Misago (U.S. Census Bureau), Dr. Russell Smith (Associate Professor, Winston Salem State University)

Downloading files from this website will require Microsoft Word for Syllabi and Course Exercises, or Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 or better for Vitae, Research, Mentoring and Contracted Reports as well as Op-Ed Columns.