Doug Noonan is a professor of public and environmental affairs whose research focuses on a variety of policy and economics issues related to cultural affairs, the urban environment, neighborhood dynamics and quality of life. His current research topics include the arts labor force and the gig economy, crowdfunding and entrepreneurship, community flood management, green buildings, historic preservation, and environmental justice.

Noonan is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cultural Economics, an elected executive board member of the Association of Cultural Economics International, director of research initiatives for the O’Neill Center for Cultural Affairs, and director of the Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Lab. His research has been sponsored by a variety of organizations (e.g., National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, National Endowment for the Arts) on topics like policy adoption, environmental risks, energy, air quality, spatial modeling, green urban revitalizations and cultural economics.

Connecting all of these research projects are issues of quality of life, the built environment, and policy effects on inequality. Noonan joined the O’Neill School after spending more than a decade on the faculty of the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.