De Gruyter Handbook of Rural Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies

Gerard is Professor of Rural Entrepreneurship at University of York St John, York, England. His current interests are village sustainability, and illegal entrepreneurship in the rural. Gerard is a Volunteer Ranger for the North York National Park. He is passionate about the North Yorkshire Moors and Rural Issues. 

Rob Smith has been a serving police officer, in Aberdeenshire for over 25 years, before he started his new adventures in education and teaching. He was awarded his PhD in 2006. He worked at Robert Gordon University and very soon was appointed Reader. In a relatively short period of time, he was awarded his first professorial position in 2015. Following ill-health retirement from his professorial role, Rob has worked as an independent scholar and consultant, maintaining active research through visiting positions at De Montfort University, University of Leicester and with East Midlands Academic Police Collaboration [EMPAC] at Loughborough University, while continuing as a doctoral supervisor at Heriot-Watt University. This extraordinary career demonstrates how Robert successfully leveraged his practical policing experience to become an internationally respected scholar with over 200 publications, having supervised 14 doctoral students to completion and examined 30+ doctoral theses, while developing expertise spanning criminal entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial policing, community policing, rural enterprise crime, and food fraud.