Ron Kalafsky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He is an economic geographer whose research interests encompass relationships between manufacturing and location; the role of human capital in industry; and the trade strategies of machinery producers. Recent research projects have included studies of manufacturers in Japan, Canada, and the Southern US. His work has been published in journals such as the Asia Pacific Business Review and the Professional Geographer.

Dr. Kalafsky currently teaches courses such as economic geography, world regional geography, and quantitative methods. He recently added a new course to the curriculum, the Geography of East Asia. He also has taught courses on the human and physical geographies of both China and Japan for recent NCTA institutes.