Dr Keith Dinnie joined University of Dundee in 2018. He is a Reader in Marketing and has held leadership roles within the School of Business as Head of Management and Marketing and Associate Dean for Enterprise and Economic Transformation. 

On 1 February 2025, he was appointed President of Bloom Consulting, a leading global consultancy focused exclusively on place branding for cities, regions and countries (https://www.bloom-consulting.com/). This prestigious role reflects his substantial track record of external engagement and his influence on the field of place branding.

In June 2024, he successfully completed the British Academy of Management Development Programme for Leaders of Engagement (BAM DPLoE).

Keith is a leading authority on place branding for cities, regions and nations. He is the author of the first textbook on nation branding, Nation Branding – Concepts, Issues, Practice (Routledge, 2007). The third edition of thebook was published by Routledge in 2022. He is the editor of City Branding – Theory and Cases (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). His books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

As a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Visit Dundee Ltd, Keith played a leading role in Visit Dundee's successful applications for funding of £190,000 in 2021-22.

In December 2022 he obtained a funding award of £10,000 from the Scottish Inward Investment Catalyst Fund. The fund is administered by Interface and funded by the Scottish Government.

He was appointed as an Expert Advisor to the Korean Public Brand Network in 2022.

Keith has delivered seminars, conference speeches, presentations and lectures in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Iceland, Portugal, Greece, China, Korea, Malaysia, South Africa and Japan. His research focuses on the application of strategic brand management techniques within the domains of tourism promotion, export promotion, inward investment attraction, and public diplomacy. His research covers the branding of cities and regions as well as nations.

He has published in several top journals including Marketing Theory, Journal of Business Research, Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, Journal of Current Japanese Affairs, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Brand Management, and International Marketing Review. His research and consultancy work includes projects conducted on behalf of market-leading consultancies Landor Associates and Burson-Marsteller, Brand Scotland, and Changsha Municipality, as well as innovative research conducted into the field of place branding amongst senior decision-makers and brand consultants on a worldwide basis. 

He has advised the United Kingdom Government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra); the Korean Presidential Council on Nation Branding; Brand Scotland; and he has been appointed to the Dundee City Council Brand Group responsible for the branding of Dundee city and region.

BU51026 Place Branding for Cities, Regions and Countries

BU51030 Digital Asset Management

BU41009 Rethinking Leadership

Keith Dinnie's research focuses mainly on place brand management for cities, regions, countries and other localities. 

As of January 2026, he has 8896 citations on Google Scholar and an h-index of 30.

In November 2024, the team in which he is a Project Co-Lead was awarded £2.5m external funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for a Place Based Impact Acceleration Account (PBIAA) project on 'Accelerating Innovation in the Forth & Tay Offshore Wind Cluster'.

In December 2022, he was awarded £10,000 external funding from the Scottish Inward Investment Catalyst Fund, administered by Interface on behalf of the Scottish Government, for the project 'Geotourist platform's economic and social benefits to Scottish tourism destinations'. 

In 2021 he was awarded three Innovation and Impact Development Fund (IIDF) awards:

-'Keywording digital assets - introduction and guidelines for SMEs' (£2,500; with Dr Szu-Hsin Wu).

-'Exploring the possibilities of upcycling spent grain from brewing to develop innovative sustainable products' (£2,500; with Dr Daniel Clarke).

-'NHS Tayside external branding and employer branding' (£2,500; with Professor Graeme Martin and Dr Stephanie Schreven).

In March 2018 he was awarded a University of Dundee School of Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Incubator Grant (IIG) for the project 'Place and identity in Dundee: Using archive materials to connect place branding and place making'.

In May 2018 he was awarded a University of Dundee School of Social Sciences Strategic Development Impact Funding grant for the project 'Innovation in provenance branding: A multi-sector approach'.