Professor Frank Vanclay Professor of Social Impact Assessment and Management Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen
Frank Vanclay is Professor of Social Impact Assessment and Management in the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where he has been since July 2010. He was previously based in Australia. Prof Vanclay is an applied, interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary social scientist. He writes in the areas of: social impact assessment; the management of social issues associated with large projects (i.e. social performance, social practice, the social field); social licence to operate; business & human rights; extractive industries & society; and project-induced displacement & resettlement. He also has interests in the social impacts of tourism; social understandings of place; and the social aspects of natural resource management, farming and agriculture. Frank has been interested in the social impacts arising from projects, the management of those impacts, and the field of social impact assessment (SIA) for his whole life. He was the lead author of the guidance document, Social Impact Assessment: Guidance for Assessing and Managing the Social Impacts of Projects, published by IAIA in 2015 (LINK). Together with Ana Maria Esteves, he co-edited the Open Access Handbook on Social Impact Assessment and Management. He is the recipient of the 2026 Global Award of the International Association for Impact Assessment.