Dr Dimitris Ballas
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Room number: | F12 |
| Telephone (internal): | 27923 | |
| Telephone (UK): | 0114 222 7923 | |
| Telephone (International): | +44 114 222 7923 | |
| Email: | D.Ballas@Sheffield.ac.uk | |
| Research Website: | http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk |
Dimitris Ballas is an economist by training (1996, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece) and also has a Master of Arts (with distinction) in Geographical Information Systems (1997, University of Leeds, UK) and a PhD in Human Geography (2001, University of Leeds, UK). He has worked as a part-time lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University (1999) and as a teaching assistant at Hull University Business School (2000).
Subsequently, he has been a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds (School of Geography, 2000-2003). In January 2004 he took up his appointment as a lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield and he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in January 2007.
Research Interests
Economic Geography; Spatial dimensions of socio-economic polarisation and income and wealth inequalities; socio-economic applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS); geographical impact of area-based and national social policies; basic income policies and social justice; exploring geographies of happiness; local labour market segmentation and socio-economic polarisation;spatial microsimulation; regional economics and regional science methods; local labour market policies and problems
Current Research
Dimitris Ballas has extensive experience in using GIS and spatial microsimulation for the evaluation of the socio-economic and spatial impact of national social policies, as well as area-based policies.
He has recently completed an ESRC mid-career research fellowship project (in the context of the "Understanding Population Trends and Processes" programme). This project aimed to critically review past studies and theories of happiness and to add a geographical dimension to recent innovative work of economists, psychologists and other social scientists in this relatively new research area. In particular, amongst the key objectives of the project were to analyse secondary survey data in order to determine what are the factors and life events increase or decrease the level of well-being of different types of individuals and to then explore the geographical distribution of subjective happiness and well-being using appropriate statistical modelling methods. For more details see UPTAP web-link under "Further details" on the top right hand-side of this page.
Teaching
My specialist teaching is in the field of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and socio-economic applications with a particular emphasis on the study of economic geography and analysis of social and spatial inequalities with the use of state of the art human-scaled visualisation (human cartograms) techniques, computer simulation and related quantitative modelling methods.
In addition, I teach on a range of modules related to economic and social geography and research methods in human geography. I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations in these areas. My teaching style is research-led, typically comprising a combination of lectures, student seminars, tutorials and computer lab practical sessions.
Dimitris teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses including:
GEO323 Social Geography of Europe
GEO358 Geography of Europe Field Class
GEO361 GIS and the Social Sciences
GEO369 Social and Spatial InequalitiesGEO6016 Data, Visualisation and GIS
All staff also engage in personal supervision and tutoring of individual students at all three undergraduate levels in the following modules:
GEO163 (Information & Communication Skills for Geographers)
GEO263 or GEO264 (Research Design in Human or Physical Geography)
GEO356 (Geographical Research Project)
Key publications
- Ballas, D. and Tranmer, M. (2011, in press). Happy People or Happy Places? A Multilevel Modelling Approach to the Analysis of Happiness and Well-Being. International Regional Science Review.
doi:10.1177/0160017611403737 - Ballas, D. (2010). Geographical simulation models of happiness and well-being. In: Stillwell, J., Norman, P., Thomas, C. and Surridge, P. (eds.) Understanding Population Trends and Processes, volume 2: Population, Employment, Health and Well-being, Springer. 53-66.
doi:10.1007/978-90-481-8750-8_4 - Ballas, D., Clarke, G P., Dorling D. and Rossiter, D. (2007). Using SimBritain to Model the Geographical Impact of National Government Policies. Geographical Analysis, 39(1), 44 - 77.
doi:10.1111/j.1538-4632.2006.00695.x - Ballas, D., Kingston, R., Stillwell, J., Jin, J. (2007). Building a spatial microsimulation-based planning support system for local policy making. Environment and Planning A, 39(10), 2482 – 2499.
doi:10.1068/a38441 - Ballas, D. and Dorling, D. (2007). Measuring the impact of major life events upon happiness. International Journal of Epidemiology, 36, 1244-1252.
doi:10.1093/ije/dym182 - Geography matters
Simulating the local impacts of national social policies, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in early 2005, written by Dimitris Ballas, Dave Rossiter, Bethan Thomas, Graham Clarke and Danny Dorling. This book presents possibilities of creating a simulation model that can be used for the estimation of the spatial impacts of social policies, as well as their socio-economic impact. The book builds on past work in the area of microsimulation to present a new spatial simulation methodology including the dynamic simulation of household spaces as an alternative to household simulation. Microsimulation has been widely used by governments around the world for the analysis of redistributive policies and budget changes. Nevertheless, the book argues that there have been very few examples of extending these simulation models to enable the estimation of geographical impacts of policies.
Free PDF copies of book available from JRF Bookshop
Other Information
Dimitris Ballas is currently Treasurer of the Regional Science Association International and has also served as Secretary of the British and Irish Section of the Regional Science Association International between August 2001 - August 2005. He is also a member of the Management Group of the University of Sheffield Centre for Public Centre for Well-being in Public Policy (CWiPP), a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of British Geographers (since January 1998), a member of the Union of Greek Geographers and of the Radical Statistics (Radstats) group, and a life member of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).
Dimitris has been involved in large research projects funded by the Irish Government, the Irish Rural Economy Research Centre, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Welsh Assembly Government, Leeds City Council, British Telecom, Office for the Deputy Prime Minister, and UK Department for Transport.