A bus ticket may seem like a simple transaction, but for millions of women across India, a zero-fare ride has come to represent something far greater. For over half of the women in the Indian urban landscapes, “being alive” in the city has historically been confined to the private sphere. A staggering 53% of women […]
Industrial policy is back, not least in the UK, with a new Prime Minister entering office committed to a substantial reboot of the country’s economic model. Across advanced economies, geopolitical uncertainty, supply-chain restructuring, economic security concerns, intensifying technological competition, and the transition to net zero are prompting governments to rethink how economic development is organized. […]
In 2008, something cracked in China’s growth model. The global financial crisis hit export-oriented manufacturing hard: factories slowed, orders collapsed, and millions of migrant workers suddenly found themselves without work. For rural migrants, the city had always been a conditional space — a place of labour, but rarely of secure belonging. Without stable employment, many […]
From Village to Region At first glance, Houhai looks like a familiar story of regional development in China. A small fishing village on the southern coast of Hainan becomes a booming surf-tourism destination; the government steps in to restore order, and a state-owned company is created to regulate the industry and align it with wider […]
Zhe Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University. He is a political geographer with research interests in geo-setting—a situational approach to understanding geopolitical processes and practices—, China’s border geopolitical economy, and geographical thought. A key aspect of his current work is fostering dialogue between Chinese and Western […]
CALL FOR PAPERS Beyond Dividing Lines: Comparative insights into cross-border cooperation worldwide Almaty & Kaskelen, Kazakhstan September 23–26, 2026 Conference language: English Format: in-person (on-site) Abstract deadline: 31 May 2026 Concept and Scope Cross-border cooperation is both a conceptually and practically important phenomenon. In practical terms, it can contribute to improving relations between neighbouring countries, […]
The civil war in Myanmar following the February 2021 military coup has generated one of South and Southeast Asia’s least acknowledged displacement crises. While international attention has focused on diplomatic stalemates and armed resistance inside Myanmar, the human consequences have unfolded quietly across India’s northeastern borderlands. In states such as Mizoram and Manipur, thousands of […]
The two cities of Macau and Zhuhai, located on the south-east coastline of China, have long been entangled. Both were administered by Xiangshan County for centuries before Macau came under Portuguese administration. Even under segregated jurisdictions, interactions between the two governments continued to produce entangled places. The entanglements of places and territories between Macau and […]
Professor Sylvia He Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 2017 RSA Early Career Research Grant Project: China’s resource-based cities in the shrinking paradigm: population change, economic revitalisation, and urban liveability Sylvia Ying He is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Management, Director of the […]
Professor Dariusz Wójcik National University of Singapore RSA Journals Committee and Editor in Chief of Finance & Space Organiser of The RSA Research Network on Geographies of Finance and Post-Socialist Transformations (first awarded in 2011) The RSA Research Network on Financial Geographies (FinGeo), awarded in 2019 and in 2023 Editor in Chief, Finance and Space
Dr Ashima Sood Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Urbanism and Cultural Economics Anant National University, India Find out more about Ashima here. Latest publications: Das, K., S. Fatima, K. Gandhi and A. Sood 2026. “Locating Urban Knowledge. Editorial” In Das, K., S. Fatima, K. Gandhi and A. Sood (eds.) Urban Knowledge Paradigms. […]
Professor Yi Liu Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China RSA Journal Committee member Regional Studies, Regional Science Editor in Chief Prof. Liu graduated from the National University of Singapore and has been with the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University since 2013. He currently serves as Assistant Dean of the School and holds the […]
Professor Canfei He Peking University, Beijing, China RSA Research Committee member RSA China Division Chair
Professor Weidong Liu Institute of Geographic Sciences & Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Co-Editor in Chief Area Development & Policy RSA Board member RSA China Division Chair (2014- 2021)
The 2026 Annual Conference of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) China Division was successfully held at Wuhan Little Turtle Hill Financial and Cultural Park, Wuhan, on 21 March 2026. The conference was organised by the RSA China Division and hosted by the School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University. More than 200 scholars from leading […]
Dr Chandrima Mukhopadhyay Independent Consultant, India Editor of the mentored Regional Studies, Regional Science Early Career section Regular participant in the RSA Women’s Network (and presented on Academia in the Global South, November, 2025) I’m currently a team member of the British Academy International Writing Workshop grant, hosted at University College London; a co-applicant for […]
Dr. Masakazu Aoki Professor of Faculty of Business Administration, Bunkyo University, Japan My research interests are “decentralization and collaboration between municipalities” and “the role of local communities in regional tourism industries”.
Lavanya Gupta Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India RSA Blog Editor Edgenet Research Network volunteer (LinkedIn Co-Management) RSA India Networks volunteer
In the high-stakes game of 21st-century geopolitics, the map of the future is being drawn on the blueprints of the past. Nowhere is this clearer than in Kyushu, Japan. The recent opening of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plant in Kumamoto Prefecture is not merely a business transaction; it is a signal event in […]
Dr Xiaofeng Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Governance and Design Thrust, Society Hub at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). She obtained her PhD in Geography from the University of Hong Kong. Her research area include political geography, the Belt and Road Initiative, transboundary and local environmental politics and governance. Her […]
Yatu Mou is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at East China Normal University, Shanghai, specializing in Globalization and Geopolitics. She also completed a visiting research term at the Department of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. With an interdisciplinary background, her research interests lie at the intersection of infrastructure geopolitics, assemblage theory, and the production […]
Diya Mehra is a Senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her research focuses on the historical and contemporary urbanization of metropolitan cities in India, metropolitan urban governance, the contemporary urbanisation of small Indian towns and their rural hinterlands, particularly in mountain environments, and […]
The notion of ‘region,’ as interpreted by planners and policymakers, is frequently administrative and formal, delineated by jurisdictional boundaries and quantified through statistical metrics such as population density, GDP, and land-use classifications (Swami & Hemrajani, 2023; Choudhary, 2021). However, for many communities in the Thar Desert of western Rajasthan- such as the Jogis, Lohars, Bhils, […]
Around one-quarter of the world’s labour force works in agriculture. In many low- to middle-income countries, labour in agriculture is one of the highest contributors. As WOTR notes in its article, women are often engaged in agricultural activities, but their work remains invisible. Stokes and Ghosh argue that this invisibility is best understood through the […]