A. J. Jacobs is Associate Professor at East Carolina University's Department of Sociology, USA. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, Belgium, and with the Faculty of Business Administration at Hosei University, Japan. Jacobs has published more than 30 scholarly articles, chapters, and books on regional development issues in North America, Europe, and East Asia, focusing upon the automotive industry, including The 'New Domestic' Automakers in the U.S. and Canada: History, Impacts, and Prospects (2016).