My friend Colin Mercer, who has died of throat cancer aged 61, was one of the most influential figures in cultural policy research over the past 25 years.
In the 1980s and 90s, he was director of the Institute for Cultural Policy Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane, and later he became professor of cultural policy at Nottingham Trent University. He also worked as a consultant in more than 30 countries.
One of three children of Rose and Frank Mercer, Colin was born in Littlehampton, West Sussex, and from Littlehampton Community school went to Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1971, where I taught him. He graduated with first- class honours in English and French, and went on to Essex University, where he helped plan the landmark Sociology of Literature conferences held there between 1976 and 1984.
He also became active in the late 70s in the Communist University of London, a summer school in which leading leftwing academics were invited to introduce radical new ideas. Still in his 20s, Colin was one of the most articulate figures in leftwing intellectual circles. He was a founding member in 1975 of the editorial board of the journal Red Letters, commissioning a number of important scholarly articles.
He worked as a research assistant at the Open University from 1980 until 1984, before emigrating to Australia. At Griffith University from 1987, he carried out policy research in Aboriginal visual arts and crafts, in libraries, in arts and education, and in new media. His proposals were adopted at both regional and national level.
He returned to Britain in 1998 and settled in Bristol. The following year, he and I set up the Cultural Policy and Planning Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University. He was already operating on a freelance basis and he left in 2003 to become a highly successful consultant, working with numerous European organisations and Unesco to recognise culture as an important part of regional identity.
Colin was an enterprising, dynamic, warm and witty man. Although he was an internationalist, he was also deeply attached to his Littlehampton roots and his home city, Bristol, where he became involved in the Bristol West Labour party and was also on the management board of Easton Community Centre.
Colin was twice married. He is survived by Taara, the daughter of his first marriage, to Sharmila; Joseph, the son of his second marriage, to Gillian; two grandchildren; and his sisters, Pat and Lynda.