Mary R. Brooks

Dr. Mary R. Brooks is Professor Emerita at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. She is the Editor of Elsevier’s Research in Transportation Business and Management.

Dr. Brooks is Vice-chair of the Marine Board of the Transportation Research Board, Washington DC. She was initially appointed to the Marine Board in 2008. She has been actively engaged in the work of the Transportation Research Board since 1993, chairing its Committee on International Trade and Transportation (2002 to 2008), and serving on the Committee for Funding Options for Freight Transportation Projects of National Significance (2007 to 2009). She was appointed Member Emeritus of the Committee on International Trade and Transportation in January 2014.

Dr. Brooks has been working in the shipping and ports field since the late 1970s, when she was employed as a researcher at the Canadian Marine Transportation Centre. Her latest book, Classics in Port Policy and Management, was published with Edward Elgar in May 2012. In 2013, she chaired the Joint Transport Research Centre of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Roundtable on Port Investment and Container Shipping Markets in Santiago Chile, and was one of the authors of the resulting report, published in March 2014.

She has authored and published more than 25 books and technical reports, more than 25 book chapters, and more than 75 articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. She serves on seven journal boards, including the Publications Board of Transportation Research Record, Maritime Policy, and Management and Ocean Yearbook. She is well known for her work on ports and short sea shipping in Canada, the U.S., South America, and Australia.

In 2010, Dr. Brooks was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the University of Sydney where she completed research on Australian coastal shipping and maritime reform. She was a Canada–US Fulbright scholar at George Mason University in 2005, during which time she investigated the impact of security regulations on the US maritime container trade. She published the resulting research, North American Freight Transportation: The Road to Security and Prosperity, with Edward Elgar in 2008. In 1998, she served as an Expert Advisor to the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission on the deregulation of the liner shipping industry.

She is the founder and chair of the Port Performance Research Network, a network of more than 50 scholars interested in port governance and port performance issues. She is also a founding member of the International Association of Maritime Economists, served as its Membership Secretary and Treasurer from 1994-1998, on its Council at three different times in its history, and as the Chair of its International Scientific Steering Committee for the 2014 Annual Conference, held in Norfolk Virginia in July. She retired from teaching in June 2013.

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