Name of event: 29th International Input-Output Conference Participation in the conference was very high: over four days, 288 IIOA members from 36 countries presented 252 papers. Along with plenary sessions, there were specialized parallel sessions, normally with six sessions running simultaneously. This arrangement maximized the number of possible presentations, yet it was often very […]
Name of event: Annual Congress of Association of European School of Planning (AESOP) The AESOP Annual Congress is a wide platform of exchange in the fields of research, education, and practice in planning. This year the central theme was the current challenges for a sustainable future. The ongoing global turbulence scenario raises the question […]
International Migration, Climate Change and Network Effects: A Worldwide Study The goal of this project is twofold. First, develop a comprehensive database of international mobility among countries. Second, at a macro level, investigate the determinants of this mobility, focusing on the interlinkages among the environmental, socio-economic, and political factors characterizing countries. To do this, I […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Implementation of Digital Public Policy in Six Local Administrations in the Colombian Meta Department This exploratory research project seeks to furnish academics in regional studies and broader audiences with crucial insights into the Covid-19 pandemic and how this has impacted […]
Logistics City-Regions in Transition. New Spatial Imaginary? Over the last few years, the goods distribution system in European cities has suffered a strong fragmentation. City-regions are substituting cities in the global economic and political setting and their roles in the world economy related to logistics. Understanding the policy and governance dimension of logistics and freight […]
(Re)Setting the Agenda: Investigating the Gendered Power-relations in the Leadership of Regional Development and Policy-making This project will challenge the masculine-coded forms of place-leadership in regional development by closely examining the different approaches to leadership that exist within regions, and ways in which different conceptualisations of power are enacted and shape policy-making and development visions. “I […]
Staying in or Moving out? – Quality of Life, Interregional Migration Decisions and Covid-19 Although COVID-19 is a global health emergency, it is experienced in local contexts, which may not all be equally equipped to offer good quality of life in pandemic conditions. Exogenous shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and associated “lockdown” policies, may […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Understanding Urban Differences in the Spread of Covid-19 and Socio-economic Inequalities: Bogotá, Colombia vs Chenai, India This exploratory study seeks to understand the impacts of Covid-19, considering urban socio-spatial patterns and the context of socio-economic inequalities in the two boroughs of Colombian capital city of Bogotá […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Green Patents in the Eurozone The project presented here looks at several highly relevant issues that are interrelated and require a joint approach: innovation, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, innovative investment is considered a particularly relevant topic, since […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Racial Disparities of the Paycheck Protection Program: Focusing on Structural Differences in Banking Infrastructure This project examines the distributional outcomes of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was implemented by the U.S. federal government to preserve jobs in small businesses in response to the 2020 coronavirus […]
Negotiating Economic Growth and Geopolitical Risks: Regional Impacts and Implications of Chinese investments in the UK, 2000-2020 This project addresses a major and surprisingly under-addressed gap in regional studies, namely the role of geopolitics in regional economic resilience. Through examining whether subnational regions (firms, local authorities and workers) in the UK are willing to trade […]
Designing Regional Innovation Policies from Innovation Scoreboards This MeRSA project aims to transform the European Innovation Scoreboard into a useful instrument for the definition, measurement and directionality of innovation policies. The project goes beyond the state-of-the-art by developing a technology (i.e. computational software) that measures innovation from multiple perspectives (i.e. glasses): size, efficiency, cross efficiency, […]
Urban Regeneration in Coastal Cities: Proposing a Strategy for Revitalising Old and Historic Buildings in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area, Ghana While the concept of adaptive reuse is widely prescribed in the existing literature as a panacea for revitalising derelict buildings, there seems to be a knowledge gap on how it could be useful in Ghana’s […]
Renewable Energy Transition and the Local Economic Development of Lagging-behind Regions Renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly important in the energy mix, making up to 35% of the electricity production in the EU in 2019, with wind power accounting for 35% of the total electricity generated from renewable sources. There is a need to better […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Ethnic Food Entrepreneurship and Migrant Inclusion in the UK: the Impact of the Pandemic Ethnic food businesses are often the first point of interaction of all migrants with their local communities, and thus capture in numerous subtle ways the cultural intersections between the local and the […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Build back better cities for aged people in Europe Covid-19 outbreak has affected mostly people in the second half of their lives, at risk of isolation and loneliness, and whose well-being has deteriorated severely. In this context, the research project aims to assess the suitability of […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Manage Well-Being to be Innovative in the Covid-19: A study of BAME Small Business Owners in the West Midlands Region, UK Principal Investigator: Bach Nguyen, Aston University, UK Team member: Hai-Anh Tran, Aston University, UK The Covid pandemic has caused chaos for many UK businesses, especially small […]
Exploring the potential of a postgrowth-inspired agenda for urban transport planning after COVID-19 Private cars’ dominant role in urban transport imposes huge health and environmental costs on cities worldwide, with the greatest share paid by more vulnerable citizens, including children and ethnic minorities. Traffic fatalities, reduced space for safe social interactions together with dangerous levels of […]
Disentangling COVID-19 as a driving force of path development processes in Spain This research seeks to further explore path development processes in Spanish regions by analysing the industrial sector’s response to the shortage of medical supplies during the COVID -19 pandemic. This was caused by difficulties in purchasing abroad and interrupted supply chains, especially during […]
Borders reloaded! The impact of rebordering dynamics on European cross-border regionalism The overall aim of the project is to investigate the ways in which the hardening of EU’s internal borders in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more broadly the resurgence of borders in the political agenda of states, affect the ideas underpinning cross-border […]
Older industrial towns at the frontier of new energy economies Transformation of energy systems in response to decarbonisation pressures is gathering pace. Moving from fossil-fuelled to renewable energy production involves shifts in energy production technologies, resource use and distribution systems, creating distinctive geographies of production. This project seeks to generate new insights into emerging geographies […]
Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry: Legacies of transition, populism and compliance with COVID-19 policies. Regional variety in policy compliance across Eastern Europe The rapid development and severity of COVID-19 crisis has been a test for governments across the world. This project examines government responses to the pandemic within Eastern Europe, a […]
Speculating on Jakarta’s Future: Real Estate and Water Crisis in Jakarta The aim of this project is to understand the role of speculative urban development in generating water crises, and how water crises in turn shape real estate markets in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city. I will use mixed methods, combining remote sensing analysis with interviews, […]
Setting the course for lignite mining regions in transition – Unpacking the pre-formation phase of path creation The current lignite exit in Germany has created a situation in which the dominant industrial path in lignite mining regions is removed and immense structural funds are turning these regions into playgrounds for new path creation. But which […]