Ray Hudson, PhD DSc DLitt FBA FAcSS MAE Emeritus Professor of Geography Durham University, UK 2014 Sir Peter Hall award 2016 RSA Best Book Award: Approaches to Economic Geography: Towards a Geographical Political Economy, Routledge.
Dr Mariachiara Barzotto University of Bath, UK 2022 Regional Studies Best Referee Award 2017 RSA Policy Expo Grant Awardee Research project: Smart Specialisation and Industry 4.0: Upgrading regional capabilities for a balanced industrial development and growth through networks
Dr Felicia Fai Associate Professor Director of the Centre for Governance, Regulation and Industrial Strategy (CGRIS) School of Management, University of Bath, UK E mail: F.M.Fai@bath.ac.uk My research interests include the organisational actors, industrial clusters, regional innovation systems and industrial strategy, predominantly through an evolutionary economics lens. For my research profile visit https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/felicia-fai/ 2017 RSA […]
Dr Carolin Ioramashvili Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Spatial Economic Analysis Early Career Editor RSA Women’s Network Organiser
In 2024, Finance and Space, a pioneering interdisciplinary journal focusing on diverse aspects of the spatial production of finance and the financial production of space, was launched.
In 2019, the Regional Studies Policy Impact book series was launched to address topical policy questions of contemporary importance to all communities engaged in regional and urban studies.
In 2014, Regional Studies, Regional Science, an open access journal about regional and urban issues in geography, economics, regional science, environmental studies, planning and governance. was launched.
In 2016, Area Development and Policy was launched, publishing high quality, original academic research examining the economic, political, cultural and geographical contexts which play a fundamental role in shaping and developing regions, cities and rural areas.
In 2006, Spatial Economic Analysis was launched, a pioneering economics journal dedicated to the development of theory and methods in spatial economics, published by RSA and the RSAI-BIS.
In 2013, Territory, Politics, Governance, an interdisciplinary journal committed to theory and research on territorial politics and the governance of space was launched.
In January 2026, the 2026-30 Regional Studies Association Strategy is published.
In February 2024, Alan Kinder was appointed the new Chief Executive of the Association.
In March 2024, Sally Hardy retired after almost 40 years with the Association.
David Bailey is Professor of Business Economics at the Birmingham Business School and a Senior Fellow of the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe programme, exploring the impacts of Brexit on UK automotive and manufacturing. He has written extensively on industrial and regional policy, especially in relation to manufacturing and the auto industry. He has […]
17 September 2026
Andy Pike is the Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development Studies in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University, UK. His research interests, publications and research projects are focused on the geographical political economy of local, regional and urban development and policy. He has undertaken research projects for the OECD, UN-ILO, […]
In recent years, industrial strategy has returned to the centre of political and economic debate. Governments across advanced economies are once again asking how they can shape growth, support innovation, and address deepening regional inequalities. For decades, however, much of industrial policy has rested on a powerful but often unquestioned assumption: that economic growth is […]
15 January 2026
Our reliance on cars is one reason why domestic transport is the UK’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024). Using alternatives, like walking and cycling, can cut these emissions quickly (Brand et al., 2021), much quicker than even the quickest shift towards electric vehicles. Yet we continue […]
Earlier in 2025, the UK government announced a commitment to reduce spending on disability benefits by restructuring entitlements and eligibility to various health-related benefits. It claims through its Pathways to Work, papers that it seeks to reduce economic inactivity across the UK ‘…[so] that everyone who can realise the benefits of work is expected and […]
In the UK, the Covid-19 pandemic was marked by strong spatial differences in the strictness and duration of government-mandated lockdowns. The average number of weeks spent in strict lockdown was 50% higher in urban local authorities than in rural ones. The marked increase in working from home that ensued, largely facilitated by the use of […]
Devolution has been at the core of the UK government’s initiatives to reduce regional inequality across the country. The Conservatives’ ‘Levelling up’ agenda was built around it, and Labour’s plan to ‘Power Up Britain’ also relies on the empowerment of local and sub-regional authorities and communities, based upon an analysis that areas have been ‘held […]
The UK government can meet some of its biggest challenges by combining mayoral devolution with its mission-led approach. Empowering local leaders to deliver on national missions will mean giving them greater control and bigger budgets. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has had a rocky first year in office. With opinion polls tumbling and […]
Place leadership has come to be seen as the ‘missing factor of the regional development puzzle’ (Sotarauta et al, 2017), but how such leadership operates in environments of conflict and contestation is still poorly understood. Using Northern Ireland as an illustrative case, recent research has sought to better understand how place leadership dynamics manifest when […]