RSA Professional Development Webinar Series

Open Access (OA) is on the rise, with continued growth in both the number of articles, and the number of venues to support OA publication. This growth has been supported by the increased proliferation of funder and institutional mandates. Researchers have more choice than ever before, but they must also make sure that they comply with the conditions of their grant funding, in an environment which is becoming ever more complex.

After giving an overview of global developments, I’ll guide you through the journey from grant funding to OA publication, signposting key steps on the path, and offering advice and practical tips around how researchers can publish and ensure compliance with their funder mandates. I’ll also be asking for your inputs around key challenges, and how Taylor & Francis, and the RSA can support you in publishing your research.

Victoria Gardner is Director of Policy at Taylor & Francis. She delivers the organisation’s policy and public affairs strategy, including internal and external advocacy, horizon scanning, and strategic planning. She advises on responses to government consultation and sits on the Publishers Association Public Affairs Committee and STM’s Policy and Advocacy committee. She has experience of working in a variety of functions including journal management, Open Access, and Technology. Previous roles include Director of Open Access (OA) Operations and Policy, working cross-departmentally to improve infrastructure, workflow and services around OA and Head of Researcher Services Development where she worked part of a cross functional team focused on product development (specifically improving services around submission to publication, with emphasis on OA). She also spent number of years working on a subject team manging a portfolio of titles, which included a secondment to the Johannesburg office.

Webinar Chair: Sally Hardy (Regional Studies Association, UK)

Sally Hardy began her career at the Economic and Social Research Council where she worked as a Scientific Officer in the Industry and Employment Committee dispensing funding to UK based social science academics. Sally moved to the Regional Studies Association where she has been CEO for just over 30 years. She has developed the organisation from a small, UK focused organisation into a global Association with an international footprint. Sally has become an advocate on publishing issues for the learned society sector speaking regularly at national conferences and events. She has advocated on different aspects of Open Access – for journals as well as for monographs and also around copy right reform and educational exceptions. She speaks on publishing practice and particularly on how to grow impact from publishing activity and on issues of learned society strategy.

Getting started on your first academic CV can seem like a daunting task, especially as a PhD student or Early Career Researcher, but fear not – this webinar will cover the following topics, in order to prepare you for setting up and maintaining a winning academic CV when applying for your first, or next academic job:

• Writing: You don’t have a CV, you produce it time and time again
• Academic: Who and why must govern your selection criteria
• Winning: Make it as snappy as possible
• Prepare: This is an ongoing business, not a last minute thing

Henrik Halkier is Professor of tourism and regional development and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published on regional development policy, tourist destination development, place branding and food tourism. He has taught and supervised in International and Cross-cultural Studies, and been engaged in triple-helix collaboration in regional and tourism development on an ongoing basis. In between, he has contributed to leadership at Aalborg University and beyond. His blog on life in Denmark under corona seems to be written by his cat and appears on the Nordic Horizons Facebook group.

Webinar Chair: Sabine Dörry  (LISER, Luxembourg)

Sabine is the RSA Ambassador to Luxembourg. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg. She is a GSO Leadership Fellow Alumni and previously held a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. Sabine is a board member of the FINGEO Network, the Global Network on Financial Geography, where she is also editor for the network’s working paper series.

Sabine’s research is mainly concerned with the financial sector, where she focuses on issues of fintech and the interaction between sustainable finance and sustainable regional development.

Dates and topics for 2021 will be announced in due course. Please check back for updates or join our mailing list.

This session will focus on the nature of the changes introduced for qualitative research during COVID lockdown. Lucy will share her experiences of preparation, running, and data management of virtual focus groups, and discuss the value and challenges of moving qualitative research online. This event has been organised as a result of feedback from the RSA Women’s Network.

Webinar Chair: Stefania Fiorentino (The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK)

Lucy Natarajan is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her current research work focuses on public participation in spatial planning. Previously, she has run major academic research projects, and policy research programmes for the UK government, the UK’s Royal Town  Planning Institute, and the Commonwealth Association of Planners.

Are you a PhD Student or Early Career researcher and about to write your first academic article? Then join us for this session where you will receive useful tips around how to write your first academic article for publication in a journal.

Marcin Dąbrowski is an assistant professor at the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. In the past he worked as a researcher at the University of Strathclyde (EPRC), the University of Vienna and as a consultant for the OECD. His research interest span across many topics related to governance of territory, from regional strategies for circular economy (H2020 REPAiR), to governance of urban climate change adaptation policies and Europeanisation of spatial planning (ESPON COMPASS). He has also published extensively on EU Cohesion Policy (e.g. H2020 COHESIFY). He is the lead editor of the Early Career Section of Regional Studies, Regional Science journal and co-organiser of the Regional Studies Association’s Research Network on EU Cohesion Policy. His academic achievements brought him several personal grants and awards (e.g. Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Urban Knowledge Network Asia fellowship, RSA Early Career Excellence Award).

Webinar Chair: Sabrina Lai (University of Cagliari, Italy)

Sabrina Lai is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture of the University of Cagliari, Italy. She received her Ph.D. in Regional and Urban Planning from the University of Cagliari (Italy) in 2009 and her MSc in International Planning & Development from Cardiff University (UK) in 2007. Her research interests and publications focus on environmental planning and relationships between spatial planning and preservation of natural resources at the regional scale, spanning from land-cover/land-use analyses to ecosystem services assessment and their integration into planning, from institutional tools for biodiversity conservation (prominently, natural protected areas and green infrastructures) to environmental assessments. In the past she worked as GIS consultant for private companies and, for over ten years, as a planning officer at the Department for the Environment of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. She is presently an editor of “Regional Studies, Regional Science” (Early Career Section), the open access journal of the Regional Studies Association.

This webinar aims at investigating and presenting professional opportunities beyond academia without losing the charm of research. The session will cover the following topics:

• Pros and Cons of a research career outside academia
• Career development outside academia
• Potential non-academic employers performing advanced research in RSA subjects (i.e. Multilateral Organisation, Governments, Think Tanks, Foundations, Museums, Industry, Service Companies, NGOs, etc.)
• Application procedures, insights and tips

Silvia Grandi has a double career path touching public, private and academic positions in research and management. Currently, she is Director at the Italian Ministry for the Economic Development and Adj. Professor at the University of Bologna in Geography of territory and Geopolitics and financial instruments for development. She works closely with the Industries, Think Tanks, National and Regional Governments, OECD, the UN, the World Bank, the Joint Research Centre, National Research Council in research-related projects. She has actively coordinated research and in-field research projects and programmes (including cohesion policy funds) with national, European and international geographical coverage. She holds a PhD in Economic and Political Geography from University of Bologna (Italy), an academic specialization period at SPRU – University of Sussex, a Post-Grad Dipl. in Management from the VUB (Belgium) and an MEng in Environmental and Territorial Engineering. Moreover, she has a specialization master in Human Resource Management at the Italian National School for Public Administration.

Webinar Chair: Olga Mrinska (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, UK)

Olga Mrinska is Associate Director, Senior Evaluation Manager at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. Originally from Ukraine, her previous roles include: lecturer at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv; Deputy Head of the Ukraine Programme for the UK Department for International Development (DFID); Research Director at the Institute for Public Policy Research North (ippr north); and consultancy for the World Bank, European Commission and other international organisations. Olga is co-founder of Urban Space 500 – a social enterprise in Kyiv where profits are directed towards urban development projects.

Olga’s research interests include: regional economic policy and governance; urban development; innovativeness and competitiveness of cities and regions; multi-national comparative regional studies; and impact investment in transition economies. Olga has been the RSA Ambassador/representative for Ukraine since 2002.

The webinar will cover the following questions and topics, when it comes to getting your first academic job:

• What Are You Looking For?
• Application components:
• What to Emphasize in the Application?
• What are search committees looking for?
• Bigger Picture

Webinar Chair: Stefania Fiorentino (The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK)

Martin (Deputy Vice Chancellor and Professor of Human Geography, Staffordshire University) works at Staffordshire University, with responsibility for Research, Academic and Strategic Planning, the Student Experience, and SU Academy Trust. Martin joined the University in May 2017 from the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield, where he was Director of the White Rose Social Science Doctoral Training Centre and Professor of Urban and Regional Political Economy.

Prior to this Martin worked at Aberystwyth University as the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Co-Director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD).

Martin is an interdisciplinary researcher, working in the broad area of society and space and specifically on the interface between economic and political geography through economic development and governance. His current research, funded through WISERD and the ESRC, is looking at city-region building and the Foundational Economy in Wales and England. He has been a member of the Regional Studies Association for 25 years and is the originator and co-editor of the journal Territorial, Politics, Governance.

During his career Martin has been a member of some 300+ interview panels, chairing some 150 of these, appointing to  a wide range of teaching, research and professional services positions, and ranging from those in the early stages of their careers to executive postholders.

Following up on the great success and popularity of our webinar on “How to get your first academic job” on 3rd June, Martin now shares his experience with you on how to win in job interviews.

The presentation will cover the following topics:

• Components of the Academic Interview
• The Phone Interview
• On-Site Interview
  • What Happens During the On-Site Visit?
  • Asking Questions During the Interview
  • What To Do When….
• Tips from a seasoned search committee member

Martin (Deputy Vice Chancellor and Professor of Human Geography, Staffordshire University) works at Staffordshire University, with responsibility for Research, Academic and Strategic Planning, the Student Experience, and SU Academy Trust. Martin joined the University in May 2017 from the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield, where he was Director of the White Rose Social Science Doctoral Training Centre and Professor of Urban and Regional Political Economy.

Prior to this Martin worked at Aberystwyth University as the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Co-Director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD).

Martin is an interdisciplinary researcher, working in the broad area of society and space and specifically on the interface between economic and political geography through economic development and governance. His current research, funded through WISERD and the ESRC, is looking at city-region building and the Foundational Economy in Wales and England. He has been a member of the Regional Studies Association for 25 years and is the originator and co-editor of the journal Territorial, Politics, Governance.

During his career Martin has been a member of some 300+ interview panels, chairing some 150 of these, appointing to  a wide range of teaching, research and professional services positions, and ranging from those in the early stages of their careers to executive postholders.

Webinar Chair: Stefania Fiorentino (The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK)
Stefania Fiorentino has recently joined the University of Cambridge, Land Economy department as senior teaching associate in Planning Growth and Urban Regeneration. Prior to that she has worked at London South Bank University (LSBU) and at University College London (UCL) and taught modules in spatial planning, local economic development and urban regeneration. She currently keeps contributing to the Bartlett School of Planning (UCL) as visiting lecturer. Her research interest focusses on ways to reconcile planning practices and local economic development for more inclusive and resilient regeneration strategies. She holds a PhD in Planning from the Bartlett School of Planning (UCL) where she has investigated the new geography of innovation in Italy, including the underlining socio-economic dynamics and the governance implications of the new workspaces (e.g. co-working spaces, maker spaces, start-up incubators) and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

In this webinar, Mark Robinson will discuss how to best promote yourself and your publication, which is essential for your continued professional and career development.

Webinar Chair: Mia Bennett (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Mark Robinson is Communications Manager at Taylor & Francis Group in Oxford, UK. Having previously worked for Springer, Mark has over 18 years’ experience in marketing and communications for academic publishing. In his current role, which includes the Taylor & Francis Author Services programme, Mark’s goal is to help researchers maximise the impact of their work.

Communicating science to policy makers is an essential skill to maximise the impact of your research. It requires finding the right angle, hook or entry point that can catch attention. It should link to current policy debates and issues. The message should be simple, but not simplistic. Lewis Dijkstra will share some of his insights drawing from his 20 years experience at the interface of science and policy. 

Webinar Chair: Lisa De Propris (University of Birmingham, UK)

Lewis Dijkstra is the Head of the Economic Analysis Sector of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy in the European Commission. He is the editor the Cohesion Report, which analyses economic, social and environmental issues in EU regions and cities. He is also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

He works closely with the OECD, the UN, the World Bank, the European Environmental Agency, the Joint Research Centre and Eurostat.

His recent work covers topics such as a global definition of cities and rural areas, measuring transport performance, the geography of EU discontent, quality of government and gender equality.

He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University, New Jersey, an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Political Science from the University of Ghent, Belgium.

Join this webinar to get tips for your next grant application and to make sure it will be a success.

Ron Boschma is a Full Professor in Regional Economics at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. He also holds a Chair in Innovation Studies at the UiS Business School, Stavanger Centre for Innovation Research, at Stavanger University. He has widely published in international journals on Evolutionary Economic Geography, the spatial evolution of industries, regional systems of innovation, the structure and evolution of networks, agglomeration externalities and regional growth.

Webinar Chair: Anne-Marie Jeannet (University of Milan, Italy)

Anne-Marie Jeannet is associate professor of sociology at the University of Milan and a research affiliate of the Dondena Centre for Social Dynamics and Public Policy (Bocconi University) and the Migration Policy Centre (EUI).  She studies study how changes in the social structure, such as deindustrialization or immigration, alter political life.  She is particularly interested in how the public perceives these social phenomena and the role of the socio-political context in shaping the public’s response to these occurrences.

Anne-Marie is currently the principal investigator of “Deindustrializing Societies and the Political Consequences” (DESPO), a project funded by an ERC Starting Grant (2020-2025). Her research has also previously been funded by the Regional Studies Association and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Key elements of the talk:

• International research with universities
• National and regional research with policy and business
• Local policy with researchers

Webinar Chair: Marte C.W. Solheim (University of Stavanger Business School, Norway)

Mark is UCL Bartlett Professor of Cities and Regions at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. He was previously Professor of Town Planning at Newcastle University (2012-20), and Professor of Spatial Planning and Governance at UCL (2001-12).

Mark is a recognised authority and has written extensively on place innovation, urban and regional planning, urban history, digital place connectivity, the politics and governance of the city, public engagement, and the use of land.

The author of 17 books and over 75 international journal papers, he has won £25m in research income, levered in £61m for university initiatives, and supervised successfully 28 PhD students.

He has given over 300 talks worldwide on cities and planning issues & has advised governments across the globe on city development. He has been a Visiting Professor at Berkeley California, Hong Kong, Shanghai, UNSW Sydney, Western Sydney, Guadalajara, Pretoria, Malta, Nijmegen, & Dublin.

He is the founding Director of Newcastle City Futures, a successful civic ideas factory housed at Newcastle University 2014-19 linking research to societal & business needs that generated collaborative & innovative ideas for all sectors across the city and partnered 200 organisations. It levered in £33m for partners, facilitated the shaping & delivery of 35 innovation projects, & engaged 155k people.

Mark chairs the Connected Places Catapult Research Panel & is Chair of the Regional Studies Association 2017-20, having been RSA Vice Chair for Publications 2012-15. He was a member of the RTPI General Assembly 2006-8, the UK Chief Scientist’s Land Use Futures Foresight project where he was seconded to the Government Office for Science 2008-11, is a former advisor to UK Government ministries DEFRA and MHCLG, & served on the NICE NHS spatial planning & health programme in 2009-10. He advised the UK Chief Scientist’s Future of Cities Foresight project 2013-16. For his contribution to cities & planning, he was elected an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2011, awarded fellowship of the RTPI in 2013 & is the recipient of 4 awards for NCF.

Are you finding yourself in the position that you have been requested to organise and host a webinar? This session will give you useful tips about how to prepare and host a webinar by yourself, giving valuable technical insights and providing an overview of “lessons learnt” from the RSA’s own Professional Development Webinar Series.

Alex joined as the RSA Communications and Membership Manager in March 2018. Prior to this, she had been a physics teacher for 17 years and an archaeological researcher/tech at UCL after completing her Masters in 1995. She completed her Doctorate in Education in 2015.

Webinar Chair: Daniela Carl (Regional Studies Association, UK)
Daniela is the Deputy Chief Executive of the Regional Studies Association. Prior to working with the RSA, Daniela worked in research and business development roles at universities in Germany, New Zealand and the UK, as events and tourism consultant and lecturer. In 2020, Daniela has been leading the transformation of the RSA’s global events and conferences portfolio to online delivery, developing two popular webinar series and RSA Global. She has written a couple of blogs about this work, which you can read here:

Embracing virtual events & webinars
Moving towards a new conference model? The rocky road to virtual conferencing

Recording a compelling video abstract requires a number of skills. Learn how to distil your most important points and messages, and conveying them to your audience by recording a compelling video abstract.

Louise will talk about the following elements:
– Why you should make a video abstract and how this helps you to stand out from the crowd
– Your target audience
– Mechanics of video
– Storytelling and script
– Equipment: Camera, sound and lighting
– Body language
– Editing of the video
– Where to host your video content

Webinar Chair: Marcin Dąbrowski (TU Delft, The Netherlands)

Louise MacLeod is the Multimedia Manager at Taylor & Francis Group in Oxford, UK. Her background is in Film and Television. She has worked on major feature film to micro production projects, ranging from Harry Potter to Midsummer Murders. She currently runs the YouTube channel for Taylor & Francis Journals and produces branded content for other Social Media platforms too. Louise is an animator, videographer, editor, director, scriptwriter, and producer.

This talk is about visual aspects of communication, particularly as they relate to graphs and maps – two things which we see quite a lot of in regional studies. Not everyone can have the technical expertise of people who spend most of their time working with packages like Stata, SPSS, R or QGIS, but even those that do can usually learn how to improve the way they communicate things (and I include myself in this group). The idea is that after listening to my short talk on the subject you will have a better understanding of how to ‘make an appeal to the eyes’ or, in other words, make charts and maps that make an impact. Too often, they are treated as supplementary or additional when in the field of regional studies, they often integral to telling the story of our work.

My talk begins with a Scottish political economist and ends with a very simple number map. In between, I will talk about Cicero, election mapping, and the principle of deriving simplicity from complexity: an objective that is certainly not confined to the field of data visualisation. After that I’ll be very happy to answer questions, as I would be during my talk.

Webinar Chair: Sylvia He (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Alasdair Rae is a Professorial Fellow in Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. His work focuses on the manipulation, analysis and visualisation of large geographic datasets in relation to urban planning, transport, policy and land issues. More generally, he is a proponent of open data and in his work seeks to make use of the wide range of new datasets that have become available in recent years to advance knowledge in policy-relevant areas. His work has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including The Economist, Huffington Post, CityMetric, WIRED, The Guardian, The Royal Statistical Society magazine and the BBC. He tweets at @undertheraedar and blogs at www.statsmapsnpix.com.

Presentations are an essential (and unavoidable) component of the research process. This webinar covers presentation basics and provides a checklist for effective communication in a range of settings.

Webinar Chair: Vanessa Guerra (Virginia Tech, USA)

Further reading:

• Ten simple rules for giving an effective academic job talk
• Giving an Academic Talk
• Taking presentations seriously
• 10 tips for speaking like a Ted Talk pro

Rachel Franklin is professor of geographical analysis in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University, as well as fellow of the Alan Turing Institute and visiting scholar at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. She is the current editor of Geographical Analysis, and prior to joining Newcastle in 2018, she was the associate director of Brown’s initiative in spatial structures in the social sciences (S4). Her research focus is in spatial demography and the interplay between spatial analytics and demographic change, in particular quantifying patterns, sources and impacts of spatial inequality.

The number of academic journals grows each year and it can be hard to know which to submit your manuscripts to. This webinar will discuss why this is important, factors to think about when making this decision and tips for making the right choice.

Webinar Chair: Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway University of London, UK and Editor-in-Chief, Territory, Politics, Governance)

Dr Madeleine Hatfield is the Director of Yellowback, which provides editorial services to learned societies, authors and publishers. Madeleine has worked on many academic journals including Regional Studies Association titles. She has also contributed to policy briefings, how-to guides and workshops on academic publishing.

This webinar will provide hints and tips for each stage of the publishing process, including:

• How to identify the right journal to submit to?
• How to prepare your manuscript to give it the best chance of being published?
• What journal editors are looking for and how they reach their decisions?
• How to engage with the review process (including how to deal with the infamous Reviewer 2)?

Webinar Chair: Madeleine Hatfield (Yellowback, UK)

John works at Loughborough University in the UK. He is a regional geographer interested in the planning and governance of cities and regions in globalisation. John has been an Editor of Regional Studies since 2013, first as its inaugural Early Career Editor and then section editor for ‘Urban and Regional Horizons’.

His recent publications include the Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories (with Anssi Paasi and Martin Jones), Doing Global Urban Research (with Michael Hoyler) and Metropolitan Regions, Planning and Governance (with Karsten Zimmermann and Daniel Galland), and he is currently co-editing a forthcoming special issue of Regional Studies on Planning Regional Futures (with Mark Tewdwr-Jones and Daniel Galland).