Lewis has held officer and advisor roles in local government, which focused on driving clean and sustainable economic growth across industrial, urban and rural contexts in the North East of England.

His main area of interest is how localities enable inward investment to drive sustainable economic development and a transition to a low carbon economy. Lewis has specialised in analysing and strategically planning how localities and regions can use existing assets, actors and institutions to enable new paths of economic growth, decarbonisation of places and the emergence of new green technology.

Lewis completed a PhD which uncovered how ports and regions diversified to capture opportunities in the growing offshore wind sector in the UK (Humber) and Germany (Lower Saxony), undertaken at Newcastle University’s Centre for Urban & Regional Development Studies and in partnership with the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).