Trained as an architect in Italy, Paolo Tombesi holds the Chair in Construction at the University of Melbourne. Between 2005-09, he was an Italian Government Research Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Turin as part of ‘Rientro Cervelli’, a national program designed to build new research capacity in the country. The overarching concern of his work is the relationship between the intellectual dimension of architecture and the socio-technical aspects of its physical construction. An international authority on the organization of architectural practice and the analysis of the building design process, he employs industrial economics, labour theory and regional development models to examine the relationship between design, built quality, technological innovation and construction markets. A former Fulbright Fellow, he has a PhD on the division of labor in architecture from UCLA. Over the last few years, he has been investigating professional transformations in Australasia, and the effects of technological globalization and international trade agreements on construction, architectural practice and education. He performs refereeing roles for several national research councils and, since 2004, has secured multiple competitive research grants for projects that span from the future of digital outsourcing in construction to the analysis of the innovation potential of iconic public buildings. In 2007 and 2010 he was appointed as built environment expert to the research assessment initiatives of the Australian Federal Government.
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