The Department of Geography mourns the loss of our colleague and friend, Tom Leinbach. Tom passed away on December 8th, 2009. We extend our deepest sympathy to Tom's wife Marge and daughter Amy. There will be a Memorial Service to celebrate Tom's life, to be held on the University of Kentucky campus March 6, 2010. For more information, please contact Sue Roberts, Chair, at sueroberts@uky.edu.

The following obituary appeared in the Lexington Herald Leader.

Dr. Thomas R. LEINBACH

LEINBACH Dr. Thomas R, 68, passed away suddenly on Dec 8 following a four-year battle with colorectal cancer. Born in Reading, PA on Nov 28, 1941, he was the son of the late Margaret F. and Raymond S. Leinbach.

Tom received his undergraduate degree in Transport Economics from the Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi. He continued on at Penn State to earn his Master's degree and PhD in Geography. He spent six years teaching at the University of Vermont in Burlington before moving to the University of Kentucky in 1977. His work focused on transportation and economic geography, global production networks, e-commerce, and rural development in Southeast Asia. As a scholar, he was eternally grateful to his mentor and friend, Peter Gould, for showing him the way to Malaysia. In pursuit of research and scholarship, Tom traveled from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines to Italy, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Through the course of his career he received research awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, Ford Foundation, and Fulbright Hays. He served as Program Director in Geography and Regional Science at the National Science Foundation from 1994-1997. In addition, he was a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. In 1996 Tom was recognized as a Centennial Fellow at his alma mater for his career accomplishments, and in 2001 was awarded the honor of Advanced Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. In 2002, the UK Board of Trustees named him a University Research Professor, and he was honored with the UK College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Award in 2006. During his career he received more than 25 grants and awards to fund and support his research.

From 1990 until his death, he was the editor of the journal, "Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy." He is survived by his beloved wife of 45 years, Marjorie Anne Richards, his daughter, Amy, the sunshine of his life, and her husband, Tom Marquis, of Boulder, CO; his brother and fishing buddy James (Sandy) Leinbach, Reading, PA; sisters, Jean M. Leinbach, North Port, FL and Jacqueline Leinbach, Ellensburg, WA, and nephew, Jeffrey Leinbach, Allentown, PA.

Tom happily spent the final days of his life working on "Growth and Change," choosing a special wine for Christmas dinner in Boulder, planning a summer fly-fishing trip to Colorado, and looking forward to a return visit to Singapore and Malaysia. His family has been deeply touched by the outpouring of love and concern from friends and colleagues all over the world and want to express our sincere thanks to everyone at the Markey Cancer Center and UK Medical Center; and special thanks and gratitude to Dr. Philip DeSimone and Dr. Kevin Pearce. A memorial service honoring his life will be held in early spring. In lieu of flowers, memorials in Tom's name may be sent to the Markey Cancer Center, 800 Rose Street, Lexington. Kerr Brothers Funeral Home, Harrodsburg Rd. is handling arrangements.

Published in Lexington Herald-Leader on December 13, 2009

Tom's Research Interests:

Tom's interests focused upon economic geography and urban-regional development issues in both national and especially international contexts.  His research especially emphasized the use of Southeast Asia as a regional laboratory.  Long standing interests in transport and accessibility were extended to include the role of air cargo as a producer service.  In this vein from 2000-2004, the Geography and Regional Science Program, National Science Foundation supported  a project entitled “Air Cargo Services and Competitive Advantage in Industrializing Economies” which examined the interaction between air cargo carriers, freight forwarders and shippers (largely electronics firms) in producing competitive advantage in the export process of Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.  Publications from this work appeared in Economic Geography, Journal of Economic Geography, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Studies and Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie.

Tom served as a core member of a team effort which involved the encouragement of cooperative and collaborative research on the theme of globalization, e-economy and transport interrelationships between European and North American scientists.  These efforts were generously supported by the National Science Foundation’ s programs in Geography-Regional Science, Western Europe OISE, and Infrastructure Systems Management and Hazard Response.  In addition European Union funding was provided under the project, Sustainable Transport in Europe with Linkages and Liaisons to America (STELLA).  A co-edited book with Cristina Capineri entitled, Globalized Freight Transport: ntermodality, E-Commerce, Logistics and Sustainability was published in 2007 by Edward Elgar.  

In addition, Tom’s specific interests were reflected in the interwoven themes of e-commerce, industrialization, technology, global production networks and regional development.  In this vein an initial effort to examine the impact of information technology upon the competitive behavior of firms and the changing nature of production linkages was accomplished through the study of national innovation systems in the internationalization process of the Finnish firm, Nokia, in both its regional and Asian ties. Related to this was the concern with firms’ adoption of electronic commerce and the impact of this technology.  In 2001, John Wiley International published an edited book on this theme entitled Worlds of Electronic Commerce: Economic, Geographical and Social Dimensions.  The Geography and Regional Science Program, NSF funded a three year (2005-2008) project with Matthew Zook entitled, Connecting Cyberspace to Place: Understanding the Evolution of Transactions and Value Chains in Electronic Commerce.  The research emphasized the forms, processes and geographies of E-commerce across a set of manufacturing firms in the U.S.  More specifically, it demonstrated how E-commerce contributes to firms’ competitive advantage through the (re)formulation of value chains (comparing physical to virtual) and thereby affects existing geographies of production, distribution and sales.  Of special interest to the project were the spatial manifestations of this reconfiguration and the question of whether value chains and changes in their geographies differed among industries, companies and products.
To complement these previous grants Tom won another grant (in September 2007), a Geography-Regional Science NSF award entitled, Towards a Knowledge Economy: Firm Competitiveness, Institutional Thickness, Localized Learning and Value Added Supply Chain Networks in Penang, Malaysia. The research, which was collaborative with Universiti Sains Malaysia faculty and graduate students, was carried out in two separate field phases.  The overarching goal of the project was to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) interact with supplier or sourcing firms and to generalize these behaviors and actions.  The analysis was carried out, within the context of the learning and innovative process, by examining the supply chain structure and distribution practices of a sample of multi-national enterprises and their supplier firms operating in Penang, Malaysia.  The aim was to detail the nature of the growth of new practices associated with supply value chain development and management and show how this varies among firms in the technology sector.  Among other factors, corporate core values, ownership strategy, technological sophistication, logistical practices, complexity of actor interaction in the value chain, degree of capitalization, product form and life cycle and especially governance structures were used as influencing variables in assessing the different ways in which firms interact and learning takes place. 
Finally a project “The Indonesian Rural Non-farm Economy” was supported by the Committee on Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society.  An initial book entitled The Indonesian Rural Economy: Mobility, Work and Enterprise was published in 2004 jointly by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies and the University of Washington Press, Seattle.  The project examined the existing and partial conceptual framework surrounding the rural, non-farm economy in an attempt to point up new ways of understanding its operational and policy potentials.  Especially important in this new framework is the role of the family as an integrated labor unit and its life cycle characteristics.  In addition temporal and spatially disaggregated data and in-depth interviews were examined to learn the importance and nature of non-farm, non-agricultural employment.  The degree of participation in the non-farm economy by family members and the timing given age and gender characteristics was identified.  Especially important is the analysis of case studies of entrepreneurship in several provinces.  Barriers and constraints to engagement were identified for policy purposes. 

Tom served as Director of the Geography and Regional Science Program in the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Research at the National Science Foundation from 1995 to 1998.  He was Editor of Wiley-Blackwell published Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy,  past Chair of the Asian Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, and an occasional consultant to the ILO, USAID, and the World Bank.  He also was the North American editor for the Ashgate Series in Economic Geography.  In May 2002 the Board of Trustees of the University of Kentucky named him a University Research Professor and in March 2006 he was named a University of Kentucky Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor.  He retired in July 2008 to work exclusively on research projects and the journal.

*photograph courtesy of Forrest Payne