Dr. Eric Spears is the Mildred Miller Fort Foundation Eminent Scholar and Chair of International Education at Columbus State University (CSU), Georgia (USA). He serves as the executive director of the Center for Global Engagement and is an associate professor of geography in the university's Department of History and Geography. He coordinates and teaches in Columbus State's International Studies Certificate Program. Dr. Spears is also the director of the Spencer House in Oxford, England, which is the CSU study abroad program sends students to The University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University in the UK. 

In 2023, Dr. Spears was elected the chair of the System Council of International Education at the University System of Georgia (USG), where is serves 26 public university and colleges campuses through shared governance and the system's central international education office. Dr. Spears also serves on the USG's general education committee for geology and geography. 

He studied in the United States, England, and Brazil throughout his graduate programs. While in Brazil, Dr. Spears conducted 15 months of field data collection in Brazilian favelas and studied democratic participation and the political economy of urban development. 

In 2010, Dr. Spears traveled to South Korea on a Fulbright grant and in 2012 traveled to the East-West Center in Hawai'i for an Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP) summer institute on China.  

Service is central to Dr. Spears' professional mission. He works with the Georgia Student Rotary Program (GRSP), which brings international students to Georgia for a year of international exchange. He is the vice-president of the Asian Studies Development Program Alumni Organization at the East-West Center in Hawai'i. Dr. Spears is the CSU faculty representative to the Georgia Climate Project, which is a non-profit that integrates research and pragmatic solutions to climate change. He also served on the Lam East-West Institute Executive Board at Hong Kong Baptist University from 2006-2010. 

Dr. Spears' research is concentrated on Latin American/Brazilian political economy, East Asian political economy, and coastal political ecology in Georgia. He is presently researching China's FDI in Brazil (and Latin America) and its influence on geopolitical relationships.  In addition, he is co-authoring a book called Cartographic America (CSU Press) with David Owings on the historic Spencer Map Collection at Columbus State University, which is a $1.2 million set of antique maps from the 1500s through the late 1800s that focus on North America's early explorers, colonial conquests, and other noteworthy aspects of the Southeast's history.