This webinar offers a brief reflection on the new policy challenges that have emerged because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis revealed how important are certain public goods, produced by social interactions in a decentralized manner, for the functioning of our societies. It is about knowledge, creativity, health, trust, security, or culture. Because they were dramatically reduced or modified for a while, we realized how important they are. This is an opportunity to build back better and be aware on how to support/promote the decentralized production of these essential public goods.

We touch upon the notion of ‘new normal’ and look at lessons that can be learned from this crisis in areas that were topical before the outbreak and are likely to be even more so after it. These include the need to steer digital transformation to minimize negative impacts on jobs and sectors while critically reflecting on their ‘essentiality’. We reflect on the essential (low tech) services that cannot be carried out online have in fact be continuing as “normal” at higher risk. But also, essential services such as creative industries, culture and arts that cannot be fully delivered online either and are likely to affect the long terms opportunities to innovate and nurture the social tissues of society. We propose what can be done about this.

Speaker(s):

Joaquim Oliveira Martins, CEPII, France

Joaquim Oliveira Martins is Counsellor at the Center for Prospective Studies and International Information (CEPII, Paris) and Lecturer at the University of Paris Dauphine-PSL. Previously, he was Deputy-Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. He authored academic articles and OECD publications on trade & competition, productivity & growth, environment, structural policy complementarities and regional policies. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK (FAcSS).

CEPII-Center for Prospective Studies and International Information: joaquim.oliveira@cepii.fr

www.researchgate.net/profile/Joaquim_Oliveira_Martins

authors.repec.org/pro/pol2/

Maria Savona, University of Sussex, UK

Maria Savona is Professor of Innovation and Evolutionary Economics at SPRU, Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, UK. She has been Honorary Research Fellow at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK, and Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Lille 1, France. She is an economist and holds a Laurea in Economics cum laude from the Department of Economics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (BA), and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from SPRU. For more details see https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p100780-maria-savona.

Chair: Maria Abreu, University of Cambridge, UK

Dr Abreu is a regional economist, working on topics relating to labour markets, education and skills, migration, and productivity. She is University Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Department of Land Economy, and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Prior to coming to Cambridge she worked for the Poverty Team at the World Bank office in Jakarta, Indonesia, on policy initiatives to promote child nutrition and educational transitions. She was also a policy research fellow at the Cambridge-MIT Institute, working on several projects to promote knowledge diffusion and innovation. She has worked as a consultant for the European Commission, the World Bank, the UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS/BEIS), the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) of Northern Ireland.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world economy has been dramatic, with the variation in impact on regions substantial, depending on the focus of the given region’s economy. As economic activity recovers generally because vaccines become widely available, the damage caused by the pandemic may linger in some of the places that were harder hit.  We presume that regions with industry sectors that were less resilient to the global financial crisis are likely to have more difficulty recovering as things return to normal in other parts of the economy. Based on that presumption, this webinar presents a regional recovery index derived from analysis of U.S. time-series data.  The index was also applied to 5 additional countries with suitably complete data sets on regional employment by industry sector: UK, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Ireland. The Pandemic Risk and Recovery Economic Tool can help policy makers to identify which regions may require additional resources to fully recover.

The Pandemic Risk and Recovery Economic Tool was developed by a team of researchers from George Mason University, the University of South Australia. The study was funded by the Regional Studies Association’s Small Grant Scheme on Pandemics, Cities, Regions & Industry.

Speaker(s)

Terry Clower, George Mason University, USA

Terry Clower, who is leading this research project, is Northern Virginia Chair and Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia just outside Washington, DC. He is also director of GMU’s Center for Regional Analysis. The Center provides economic and public policy research services to the private, non-profit and public sectors. He was previously director for the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas and spent 10 years in private industry in logistics and transportation management positions.

Dr. Clower has authored or co-authored over 150 articles, book chapters, and research reports reflecting experience in economic and community development, economic and fiscal impact analysis, transportation, land use planning, housing, and economic forecasting. His scholarly articles have appeared in Economic Development Quarterly; Urban Studies; Economic Development Review; Regional Studies, Regional Science; the Australasian Journal of Regional Studies; Regional Studies Regional Science, Sustaining Regions; and Applied Research in Economic Development.

Keith Waters, George Mason University, USA

Keith Waters is founder of the consultancy, Adaptive Regional Solutions, and a senior research associate and adjunct professor at the Centre for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.  He has held a number of previous research roles.  He earned a doctorate in public policy analysis from George Mason University in 2018.

Jacob Irving, University of South Australia, Australia

Jacob Irving is a project officer in the Business Research Team for the Dean: Research and Innovation, Prof Andrew Beer, at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.  He is currently working on projects related to place-based policy, industry restructuring and the future of work.  He obtained academic training in Melbourne and Lyon.

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. She currently sits on the Society Publishers Coalition Council and the Governance Committee of the Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers and is the founder member of the Academy for Social Science CEOs Committee.

Chair: Will Rifkin, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Will Rifkin was until 2020 director of the Hunter Research Foundation Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia.  He has over 100 academic publications with a special focus on organisational and regional learning.  He works with government, industry and community stakeholders to strengthen their relationships with one another by helping them to arrive at agreed socioeconomic indicators.

The recent literature in regional studies has at least two influential but parallel tracks. In the evolutionary economic geography (EEG) track, much has been written on and debated about knowledge and innovation in regional path development and the role of related variety in regional diversification. In the second and relatively smaller strand of literature linked to the global production networks (GPN) approach, researchers are concerned with how regional actors and assets can be strategically coupled with the competitive dynamics of global production networks. This lecture intends to serve as an initial and sympathetic attempt to pave a “side track” to connect these two parallel strands that can enable researchers on both tracks to engage more explicitly with each other. To do so, I offer a reconceptualization of “regional worlds” as a central concept in regional studies. I argue that both strands of literature are premised on their different conceptions of “regional worlds” of innovation and production – a more endogenous view of regions as “specialized worlds” of production in the EEG track and a more relational view of regions as “interconnected worlds” of production in the GPN literature. Extending further Boschma’s (2017) Regional Studies annual lecture, I believe this reconceptualization of “regional worlds” can allow analytically the possibility of strategic coupling with GPNs as a new form of related variety in regional diversification by highlighting the importance of extra-local/regional linkages and network dynamics. By relating related variety to strategic coupling, this view can potentially reconcile the coexistence of endogenous and exogenous sources of regional transformation. I will end the lecture with some future agenda for theory and practice in regional studies.

Speaker: Professor Henry Wai-chung Yeung, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Henry Wai-chung Yeung is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Co-Director of the Global Production Networks Centre (GPN@NUS), and Director of the JY Pillay Comparative Asia Research Centre in the NUS Global Asia Institute. He is Principal Investigator of a US$4 million strategic grant awarded by the National University of Singapore to establish the GPN@NUS Centre. He is a leading social scientist specializing in theories and the geography of transnational corporations, global production networks and global value chains, East Asian firms and developmental states in the global economy.

Professor Yeung received his BA (First Class) from NUS in 1992 and PhD from the University of Manchester in 1995. He was a recipient of the NUS Outstanding University Researcher Award (1998), Outstanding Researcher Award (2008), and University Research Recognition Award (2018). In December 2017, he was selected by the American Association of Geographers in the United States to receive the AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors for 2018 “in recognition of his extraordinary scholarship and leadership in the discipline”. Earlier in June 2017, he was conferred the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Murchison Award 2017 for “pioneering publications in the field of globalisation”. Professor Yeung has published six authored books, seven edited books, and over 100 journal papers and 50 book chapters across the fields of human geography, urban and regional studies, Asian studies, international business, and political economy. His recent monographs are Strategic Coupling: East Asian Industrial Transformation in the New Global Economy (Cornell Studies in Political Economy Series, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, May 2016) and Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World (with Neil Coe, Oxford University Press, Oxford, April 2015). His research has achieved very high impact in the social sciences. The ISI Web of Science database shows that he has 12 journal papers each receiving over 100 citations and his accumulated work has been cited at least 5,100 times in over 3,900 publications (excluding own work) as of January 2020, generating an h-index of at least 34. His citations on Google Scholar have exceeded 19,000. He is Editor of two top journals in Geography since 2001 – Environment and Planning A and Economic Geography and Past Editor of Review of International Political Economy (2004-2013), and serves on the editorial boards of 20 other international journals, including Global Networks, Journal of Economic Geography, and Journal of International Business Studies.

Discussant: Professor Andres Rodriguez-Pose, London School of Economics, UK

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and a part-time Professor of Innovation at the University of Stavanger (Norway). He is past-President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). He is a regular advisor to many international organisations, including the European Commission, the World Bank and numerous UN agencies. He was awarded the 2018 ERSA Prize in Regional Science and has been a holder of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant and of a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award. In 2019 he received Doctorates Honoris Causa from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and Jönköping University (Sweden). He is an editor of Economic Geography, and sits on the editorial board of 33 other scholarly journals.

Introduction & Chair: Professor Jennifer Clark, The Ohio State University, USA

Jennifer Clark is Professor and Head of the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School of Architecture in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Clark is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association (RSA). She is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Regional Studies and recently served as the Chair of the Economic Geography Specialty Group (EGSG) of the AAG (2017-2019). Dr. Clark earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University, a Master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.

Dr. Clark’s most recent book: Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities (2020) is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Her other books include: Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy (2013), Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor, and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy (2007) w/ Susan Christopherson, winner of the Best Book Award from the Regional Studies Association in 2009, and the 3rd edition of Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning (2012) w/ Carl Patton and David Sawicki, a widely adopted text in public policy and urban and regional planning courses. She is also co-editor of the Handbook of Manufacturing Industries in the World Economy (2015) and Transitions in Regional Economic Development (2018). In addition, she has written numerous articles and book chapters.

Dr. Clark researches and teaches courses on urban and regional economic development theory, analysis, and practice as well as research design and methods.  She has provided expert testimony before the US Congress and policy advice and consulting to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Canadian, UK, and US governments. Before joining the Knowlton School, Dr. Clark taught at Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology where she was also the Director of the Center for Urban Innovation.

How will Covid-19 affect business dynamism?  All businesses will be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, most negatively, some positively. Professor Mark Hart provides an early assessment in this webinar by exploring evidence from previous pandemics and provide an overview of early assessments of the emerging evidence on the business impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese firms and other related businesses. Early evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in China emphasises the severity of the short-term effects on SMEs. The regional implications of Covid-19 in the UK will be explored by examining lessons from the Great Financial Crash and exploring scenarios using a job creation and destruction framework.  In addition, the webinar will take an early look at company incorporations and dissolutions in the first quarter of 2020 with the same period in 2019 using the latest available data from Companies House in the UK.

Click here to view the PowerPoint presentation.

Speaker: Professor Mark  Hart, Aston University, UK

Mark Hart is the Academic Lead of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme in the UK who is Professor of Small Business and Entrepreneurship in Aston Business School.  He is also Deputy Director of the national Enterprise Research Centre (www.enterpriseresearch.co.uk)  which is jointly hosted at Aston University and the University of Warwick which addresses issues of small business growth.  It is funded jointly by the ESRC, BEIS, British Business Bank, Intellectual Property Office and Innovate UK.

Over the last 40 years, Professor Hart has worked and published extensively in the areas of entrepreneurship, enterprise and small business development and policy.  He jointly manages the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project  in the UK and advises a number of UK Government Departments and the Devolved Administrations on enterprise issues.

His work on High-Growth Firms (HGFs) at Aston has been influential in shaping policy discussions and actions in the UK and he is currently working for NESTA and the OECD on a  range of follow-up projects.  He has undertaken numerous evaluation studies of business support products and services in the UK and Ireland.

Chair: Professor Heike Mayer, University of Bern,  Switzerland

Heike Mayer is professor of economic geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland and an adjunct professor in urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech in the United States. She is also a member of the University of Bern`s Center for Regional Economic Development (CRED). Her research focusses on dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship, place making and sustainability. She is currently leading research studies on the role of social innovation in peripheral regions, transformation processes in industrial towns, as well as multilocal work arrangements and digitalization. She is author of the book Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Second Tier Regions (published by Edward Elgar, Cheltenham), co-author of the book Small Town Sustainability (with Prof. Paul L. Knox, Birkhäuser Press, Basel), and co-author of the book The Political Economy of Capital Cities (with Prof. Fritz Sager, Dr. David Kaufmann, Dr. Martin Warland, Routledge, London).

We have shocks, and we have trends, like always in human history. We have just been reminded about our vulnerability to shocks through covid-19 – but when the pandemic exploded many places and people were still struggling to come to terms with the brutal impact of the 2008 economic and financial crisis: shocks can change the world (or better, parts of it) for a very long time, and some places may never recovered, prompting new questions and the set-up of new priorities and agendas. On the other hand, shocks occur in the context of global megatrends – including technological paradigm shifts and economic globalisation – which transform and shape the way we live, providing new opportunities for development. However, these same global megatrends can also be highly divisive and, interacting with shocks, pose huge challenges for social cohesion, political and economic equity, sustainability, and even peaceful coexistence.

History matters, and, as we all know, historical paths are geographically-specific at all layers of geography. Shocks are spatially asymmetric, and trends have heterogeneous impact on places.

The starting questions here today are the following: What can we learn from history? Do we learn from history or not? Is the present different from the past, and how?

Speakers:
Dr Joaquim Oliveira Martins, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, France

Joaquim Oliveira Martins is currently Deputy-Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities focusing on Entrepreneurship & SMEs policies; Regional, Rural and Urban policies; and Tourism. He was previously Head of the OECD Regional Development Policy Division and supervised projects on regional and urban economics, governance, regional statistics and well-being. He was Head of the OECD Structural Economic Statistics Division, where he focused on Trade & Globalisation studies, Productivity measurement and Business statistics. He is author of many academic articles and OECD publications. When Senior Economist at the OECD Economics Department, he coordinated and authored reports on Policy Response to the Threat of Global Warming, Competition, Regulation and Performance, Ageing & Growth, Investment in Tertiary Education, and Public Health Expenditure Projections. He was also Head of Desk for Emerging markets, in charge of the first OECD Economic Surveys of Brazil, Chile and several transition countries. Before the OECD, he was Research Fellow at the Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII, Paris). He holds a MSc in Econometrics and a PhD in Economics from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and is currently Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Dauphine PSL and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK (FAcSS).

Dr Sergio Petralia, Utrecht University, The Netherlands and London School of Economics, UK

Sergio Petralia is an assistant professor at Utrecht University. He is also an affiliated researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the CID Growth Lab at Harvard University. He is currently working on the economic and spatial effects of disruptive technological change. Most recent research projects study the emergence and spatial concentration of new technologies using historical data on patent activity, and the impact of disruptive technological change on income and wages. Sergio holds a Bachelors in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires, a Masters in Economics from the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, and Msc in Economics from Pennsylvania State University in the US. He finished his Ph.D. at Utrecht University in 2017.

Professor Elisa Giuliani, University of Pisa, Italy

Elisa Giuliani is Professor at the University of Pisa where she directs the Responsible Management Research Center (REMARC). She has conducted research at the interface of economic geography and innovation studies and she is currently investigating the geography of (ir)responsible capitalism. She is Editor of Research Policy and in the Editorial Boards of Journal of Economic Geography and Economic Geography.

Chair: Professor Simona Immarino, London School of Economics, UK

Simona Iammarino is Professor of Economic Geography at the Department of Geography & Environment of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She served as Head of Department (2014–2017), and is an academic member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors (2016-2022, 2nd term). She is also an Affiliate Faculty Member at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) – Social Science, L’Aquila, Italy. Simona’s main research interests lie in the following areas: Multinational corporations, location and innovation strategies, and local impacts; Geography of innovation and technological change; Regional and local economic development and policy. She was co-editor of Regional Studies (2008-2013). She has published more than 50 articles in major peer-reviewed journals, two co-authored books, around 30 book chapters, and numerous working papers, policy reports and other publications. Simona has a long-term experience in externally funded international research projects, and in consultancy projects for various international organisations (e.g. EU Commission, OECD, United Nations) and government agencies.

Over the last 30 years, Professor Simon Dalby has been a pioneer in the field of critical geopolitics and specifically in environmental security and latterly Anthropocene geopolitics. Our conversation is an opportunity to reflect on how his academic and public-facing interests have shifted due to circumstances and events such as the end of the Cold War, the War on Terror, financial crises, and epidemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. He has not hesitated to critique those who peddle geographical and ecological simplicities. Professor Dalby’s concern with how the geopolitical world of nation states and borders sits awkwardly and violently with planetary boundaries, systems and thresholds remains undimmed. Is he optimistic about our common future?

Speaker: Professor Simon Dalby, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Simon Dalby is a Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His published research deals with climate change, environmental security and geopolitics.

He is author of Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, (University of Ottawa Press, 2020) and Security and Environmental Change (Polity, 2009), and co-editor of Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (Routledge 2019), and Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics (Routledge 2016).

Simon Dalby was educated at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Victoria and holds a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University. Before joining the Balsillie School he was Professor of Geography, Environmental Studies and Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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

Professor Klaus Dodds is the Director of Research for the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his achievements in the fields of geopolitics and human geography. In academic year 2010-11, he was a visiting fellow at St Cross College, Oxford and HARC fellow at Royal Holloway. In October 2012, he was elected Academician (now Fellow) of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). In November 2016, he was awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust (2017-2020) for a project examining ‘A new North? The making and remaking of the global Arctic’. In academic year 2017-18, he is a visiting fellow at St John’s College, Oxford. He researches in the areas of geopolitics and security, media/popular culture (esepcially on film theory) and the international governance of the Antarctic and the Arctic.

This webinar is organised in collaboration between the OECD Spatial Productivity Lab at the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development (an integral part of Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities) and the Regional Studies Association. The webinar is the 9th Meeting of the OECD Spatial Productivity Lab and part of the RSA’s Regions Cities Industry Webinar Series.

Resources:

Homeworking in the UK, Darja Reuschke

Teleworkability and the COVID-19 crisis: A New Digital Divide? – Matteo Sostero, Santo Milasi , John Hurley, Enrique Fernandez-Macías and Martina Bisello

Who can Telework Today? The Teleworkability of Occupations in the EU

Speakers:

Dr Matteo Sostero, Economist, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Spain

Matteo Sostero is a researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Seville. He holds a Ph.D in Economics from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. His research interests are in labour economics, especially the impact of technology on jobs and working conditions, as well as data science and data visualisation.

Teleworkability and the COVID-19 Crisis: A New Digital Divide?

Dr Darja Reuschke, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Southampton, UK

Darja Reuschke is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on homeworking, home-based businesses and self-employment.

Homeworking and its Effect on Productivity and Wellbeing

Professor Patricia Mokhtarain, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering (Transportation), Georgia Institute of  Technology, USA

Patricia Mokhtarian is the Susan G. and Christopher D. Pappas Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the Geor­gia Institute of Technology. She joined Georgia Tech in 2013, after 23 years at the University of California, Davis. Before that, she spent nine years in regional planning and con­sulting in Southern California, after completing her PhD at Northwestern University.  Dr. Mokh­tarian has specialized in the application of rigorous quantitative methods to the study of travel behavior for more than 40 years, and a key research interest has been the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior.  She has authored or co-authored more than 200 refereed journal articles, technical reports, and other publications, including more than 40 peer-reviewed articles relating to teleworking. She is a recent Past Chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research, and serves on the editorial boards of nine transportation journals.

Teleworking and Mobility: What do we (think we) know and not know?

Mattia Corbetta, Policy Analyst, OECD Trento Centre for Local Development, Italy

Mattia Corbetta is a Policy Analyst at the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development. Between 2012 and 2019 he worked as a Policy Adviser at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, where he contributed to designing the Italian Startup Act, the National Plan on Industry 4.0 and other policies on digital and inclusive entrepreneurship. In the past, he worked at the Italian Chambers of Commerce in Switzerland and Morocco, at the Italian Embassy in Syria and at the UN Volunteers program in Germany. He graduated in International Relations at LUISS Guido Carli, Rome, gained a MA in Business & Trade in MENA at the University of Perugia and a MA in Contemporary History at the University of Bologna.

Exploring Policy Options on Teleworking

Chair: Dr John Harrison, Reader in Human Geography, Loughborough University, 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).

Global Value Chains and Foreign Direct Investment create both opportunities and challenges for cities and regions. The pandemic has deeply affected consolidated internationalisation patterns and the local impacts of these global forces. Regional recovery needs to leverage all possible opportunities offered by the new global order. This calls for a reconsideration of existing policy tools and for evidence-based discussions on policies that work on the ground to promote regional recovery and development.

The Policy Panel will discuss how public policies for cities and regions (including Smart Specialisation) should evolve in response to a global economy in constant transformation and how Global Value Chains and FDI can be successfully leveraged by local policy makers.

Speakers

Professor Riccardo Crescenzi, London School of Economics, UK

Professor Riccardo Crescenzi is a Full Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics where he is also affiliated with the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC). Riccardo is the current holder of a European Research Council (ERC) Grant. He is also an Associate at the Centre for International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Taubman Centre, at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. Riccardo has provided academic advice to, amongst others, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Inter-American Investment Bank (IADB), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and various national and regional governments. Riccardo is the 2017 recipient of the Geoffrey J.D. Hewings Award from the North American Regional Science Council. His research is focused on Regional Economic Development and Growth, Innovation, Foreign Direct Investment, Global Value Chains and the analysis and evaluation of European Union policies.

Dr. Austin Kilroy, World Bank, Croatia

Austin’s responsibilities as a staff in the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice in the Europe and Central Asia region have focused on: team leader for an advisory service on regional economic development in Eastern Croatia (involving 90 people from 12 departments of the Bank); team leader for a technical assistance project to approximately 150 municipalities in six countries of the Eastern Partnership; and previously team member for support to the Government of Croatia on cluster competitiveness as part of their smart specialization strategy. Austin joined the Bank in 2010, and since then has worked on lending operations, analytic work, and technical assistance in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  He is a main author of the Bank’s report on ‘Competitive Cities for Jobs and Growth’.  Before coming to the World Bank, Austin worked in an architectural start-up in Beijing, NGOs in France and the UK, and in politics for the Leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the House of Lords in London.  He has a PhD in regional and urban economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and a BA in Economics and Politics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Dr. Sara Amoroso, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Spain

Sara Amoroso is an economist at the Joint Research Center (JRC), European Commission, Spain, since 2013. Her research focuses on industrial innovation and innovation policy. Her main topics of interest are foreign direct investment, firm dynamics, and innovation networks. She is an associated editor of the Journal of Technology Transfer. Her research has been published in journals such as Small Business Economics, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, and Science and Public Policy. She has recently published a co-edited volume on “Science and Technology Parks and Regional Economic Development: An International Perspective”.

Dr. Alexander Lembcke, OECD, Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, France

Alexander C. Lembcke is an Economist and Policy Analyst at the OECD’s Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities where he leads the quantitative analysis of regional and urban business and labour dynamics. His work covers the economic analysis of productivity, transport infrastructure and innovation in cities and regions with a focus on the role of SMEs and entrepreneurship. He occasionally published academically and was and is responsible for several OECD publications including the recent reports on “Productivity and Jobs in a Globalised World: (How) Can All Regions Benefit?”, “Broadening Innovation Policy for all Regions and Cities” and “Benefiting from Accessibility in Cities and Regions”.

Chair: Dr. Peter Wostner, Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, Republic of Slovenia

Dr. Peter Wostner is an expert on development, competitiveness and territorial policies, EU budget and EU Cohesion Policy where he has been, for over 15 years, directly involved in the EU budget and regulatory negotiations as well as setting up of the programming framework and implementation arrangements, including design of (RTDI, competitiveness and HR) policy instruments.

He has been the driver of setting up of Slovenian clusters, the Strategic Research and Innovation Partnerships in the function of head of the Smart Specialisation Unit responsible for policy coordination of innovation related activities within the Slovenian Government between 2014 and 2019.

Currently he works as senior analyst dealing with productivity, digital and structural transformation as well as territorial dimension at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development. He is a lecturer, moderator and an author of number of articles, especially on the EU budget, development and Cohesion policy.

Dr. Wostner is also the chairman of the OECD’s Working Party on Rural Policy and Vice-Chair of the Regional Development Policy Committee.

Thought leaders throughout the world have been calling for a Green New Deal as a post-Covid-19 recovery strategy. The goals are threefold: protecting the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions; build an economy based on renewable energy and related clean technologies, and to do both in ways that promote greater equity for those who have borne the brunt of environmental harms and limited economic opportunity. Our panellists explore the elements of a Green New Deal on three continents Europe, North America and South America.

Professor Joan Fitzgerald, NNortheastern University, USA

Prof. Fitzgerald’s latest book is Greenovation: Urban Leadership on Climate Change (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), which examines leading practices in North America and Europe. Her article, Cities on the Frontlines, appeared in a special issue of the American Prospect on the Green New Deal in December 2019. She published this op-ed as a leading expert to the C-40 Cities Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force.

Dr. Rogério Studart, The New Climate Economy at the World Resources Institute, USA

Rogério Studart is a senior fellow of the World Resources Institute, currently working on the new climate economy, an initiative to promote policies guided by evidence-based analysis of costs, benefits, and opportunities of the much-needed transitions to low-carbon growth.

Dr. Studart is a non-resident fellow of Brazil’s Center of International Relations – CEBRI and a distinguished fellow at the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils. Previously he was an executive director to the World Bank Group, representing Brazil and eight other nations. In this capacity in different years, he was a member of every executive board committee, represented Brazil at the meetings of the g-20 and other international forums.

Dr. Studart was also Executive Director for Brazil and Suriname at the Inter-American Development Bank Group (IADB), having acted as chairman of several of its board committees. He has also held positions with the United Nations in Santiago, Chile, and in Geneva, Switzerland, and at the Chase Manhattan Bank of Brazil.

Dr. Studart is an economist by profession and holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, England.

He is an award-winning scholar, published books and several articles on macroeconomics, finance, and development finance, and columns in different news media around the world.

Chris Goodall, Carbon Commentary, UK

Chris Goodall is a businessperson and author. He writes about the transition towards net zero, particularly the technologies that will be used. His most recent book was about the UK in particular. ‘What We Need To Do Now’ was on the shortlist for the Wainwright prize. It offers an outline plan for full decarbonisation. He was chair of one of the UK’s fastest growing car charging companies which was sold to Engie in the summer of last year.

Chair: Dr. Will Eadson, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Will Eadson is a Reader in Urban Sustainability Policy at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University. He has a longstanding record of research and publications in the field of urban and regional sustainability policy, with a particular focus on the social and spatial justice implications of sustainability-related policy. This has included research for EU, national, regional and local government, research funders and large charities. His current research and writing focuses on two themes:  economic geographies of sustainability transitions; and understanding democracy in theory and practice in sustainability transitions. Will is RSA Yorkshire and Humber branch chair and an Associate Editor of Regional Studies, Regional Science. He is also Editor (Environment and Society section) of Geography Compass journal.

Entrepreneurship can promote economic performance in a variety of ways, short-term and in the longer run. A key finding of recent empirical studies is that high regional levels of entrepreneurship in terms of self-employment and new business formation tend to be rather persistent and can last for decades or even more than a century. A long tradition of regional entrepreneurship is often associated with certain mentalities and basic values of the population. Such a tradition or ‘culture’ of entrepreneurship can shape the ability of a regional economy to cope with external challenges such as national or global crises. I summarize research on long-term persistence and effects of entrepreneurship, discuss policy implications, and identify important avenues for further research.

Speaker: Professor Michael Fritsch, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany

Michael Fritsch is Senior Professor of Economics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, and Research Professor at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). He is also Associate Editor of the academic journals Regional Studies and Small Business Economics. Michael Fritsch has received his degrees in economics (Diplom Volkswirt, Ph.D., Habilitation) from the Technical University of Berlin. From 1992-2006, he was Chair of Economic Policy at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, and from 2006-2018 Chair of Business Dynamics, Innovation, and Economic Change at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

Michael Fritsch has published more than two hundred academic articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes as well as diverse books. His main fields of research are new business formation processes and their impact on economic development, innovation behaviour, innovation systems, and economic development strategies. A main topic of his recent research is the role of historical factors that shape the long-term development trajectories of regions. This particularly includes the role of informal institutions such as a regional culture of entrepreneurship.

Speaker: Michael Wyrwich, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Dr. Michael Wyrwich is Associate Professor for Small Business & Entrepreneurship at the Department of Innovation Management & Strategy at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands). Furthermore, he is adjunct lecturer at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) where he also obtained his PhD and habilitation degree in Economics. Currently he is also serving as a principle investigator of the project “The socioeconomic heritage of the innovation system of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) across East German regions,“ which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education Research.

Michael’s research interests and teaching focus cover diverse topics in the area of entrepreneurship, innovation (systems), and regional development. In his work, he often takes a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective and considers the historical, institutional and environmental context. His articles were published in major journals in economics, management, and geography.

Discussant: Professor David B. Audretsch, Indiana University, USA

David Audretsch is a Distinguished Professor and Ameritech Chair of Economic Development at Indiana University, where he is also serves as Director of the Institute for Development Strategies.  He also is a part-time Professor at the Department of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Klagenfurt, Austria and an Honorary Professor of Industrial Economics and Entrepreneurship at the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.

Audretsch’s research has focused on the links between entrepreneurship, government policy, innovation, economic development and global competitiveness. He is co-author of The Seven Secrets of Germany, published by Oxford University Press. He is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Small Business Economics: An Entrepreneurship Journal. He was awarded the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research by the Swedish Foundation for Entrepreneurship. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Augsburg, Jonköping University and the University of Siegen. Audretsch also was awarded the Schumpeter Prize from the University of Wuppertal.

Audretsch has consulted with numerous international organizations, including the World Bank, OECD, European Union and the United Nations. He currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board to a number of research and policy institutes, including the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum in Stockholm, the Jackstädt Centre for Entrepreneurship in Wuppertal, Germany, and the American Center for Entrepreneurship in Washington, D.C.

Chair: Professor Maryann Feldman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Maryann P. Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, an Adjunct Professor of Finance at Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Research Director at UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.  Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth. Dr. Feldman is an editor of the journal, Research Policy.

Dr. Feldman was the winner of the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation and the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. Her dissertation, Geography of Innovation, examined the spatial distribution of industrial innovation and provided an empirical model of the factors and resources that affected the production of new product innovation. This publication is noted to be the first time that the term “geography” was used to describe spatial phenomenon and is now an accepted lexicon. Currently, the geography of innovation is a subject area under the strategy division of the Academy of Management.

From 2014-2017, Dr. Feldman held a joint appointment at the National Science Foundation as the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program Director and chaired an inter-agency working group on Science Policy.

Feldman’s early work revealed that universities were necessary, but not sufficient, for technology-based economic development. These findings launched a new area of investigation into university technology transfer.  She has written extensively on the process and mechanics of the commercialization of academic research. Feldman’s most recent work explores emerging industries, entrepreneurship and the process of regional transformation – topics covered in the edited book, Cluster Genesis: the origins of technology-based economic development.  She has written extensively on the early development and growth of biotechnology, as an example of a transformative technology.  In 2010, she completed a study of the industrial applications of optical science, which demonstrated typologies of places that were able to sustain industrial optics through a variety of economic development strategies.

Currently, Feldman is actively engaged in researching the industrial genesis of the Research Triangle region, in a joint project with Nichola Lowe.  The project follows the development of the regional economy over a 50 year time period using a unique database of 3200 entrepreneurial ventures and attempts to understand the institutional dynamics that created a vibrant regional economy. This research approach is being replicated in other entrepreneurially active regions including: Sophia Antipolis, France; Austin, TX; and Chatanooga, TN.

Feldman is a prolific writer whose work appears in numerous journals, including: Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, The Journal of Technology Transfer, American Economic Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Economic Geography, and The Brookings Papers on Economic Policy.

Uneven development—broadly defined as the unequal distribution of people, resources, and wealth—is a, if not the, fundamental characteristic of human geography. Uneven development is located and evidenced at global, regional, national, urban, and suburban spatial scales, such that it is combined and compounded for some people and places more than others. Patterns of uneven development indeed mark the times and spaces of human history and have provided the rich basis for theoretical developments in human geography and the social sciences more broadly. This webinar seeks to get behind the rise and possible fall of uneven development through an in conversation dialogue between Jamie Peck and Marion Werner. It will focus on: how the authors have encountered uneven development in their academic careers; how they have used uneven development narratives in their research over time; and where they see academic and policy debates heading on the unequal shape of contemporary capitalism.

Speakers:

Professor Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia, Canada

Jamie Peck is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he is a Distinguished University Scholar.  With long-term research interests in urban restructuring, geographical political economy, labor studies, the politics of policy formation and mobility, and economic geography, his current research is focused on the political economy of neoliberalization and capitalist transformations in South China.  Jamie Peck’s recent books include Doreen Massey: critical dialogues (2018, Agenda, coedited with Marion Werner, Rebecca Lave and Brett Christophers); Offshore: Exploring the worlds of global outsourcing (2017, Oxford University Press); and Fast Policy: Experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism (2015, University of Minnesota Press, with Nik Theodore).

Dr Marion Werner, University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA

Marion Werner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.  Her research is located at the nexus of critical development studies, feminist theory, and political economy with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Chair: Professor Martin Jones, Staffordshire University, 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.

Globally there is an on-going debate on which types of policies and programmes are most appropriate to improve human welfare and boost the economies of cities, regions and communities that are lagging behind.  Often this debate is framed as a dichotomy between place-based policies on the one hand, and people-based policies on the other.  This Webinar reports on the outcomes of the RSA’s Policy Expo into place-based policy in the 21^st Century. The Expo set out to understand those elements that are seen to constitute good practice in place-based policy in the 21^st Century by drawing on the published literature, as well as the perspectives of both the academic community and policy makers.  Some of the headline findings from this Expo include the:

• ubiquity of place-based policies, with examples found across developed and developing economies, and across policy domains as diverse as economic development, health and social welfare, as well as environmental management;
• strong influence of institutional dynamics on the roll-out and success of place-based policies;
• heightened awareness amongst academics, but a lack of insight amongst policy makers, around the importance of how place-based policies are implemented and the associated need for governments to gather the support of communities, and especially local leaders, if they are to achieve their goals; and,
•  potential to improve future place-based policies by considering – and incorporating into programme designs – ten success factors.

Finally, the Webinar seeks to open up the debate on place-based policy across the academic and policy community. It seeks to stimulate a search for new and more impactful policy prescriptions in order to ensure the more effective use of scarce public-sector resources and advance the wellbeing of the most disadvantaged and deliver a sustainable future.

Click here to find out more about the Policy Expo.
Click here to find out more about the Policy Expo Grant Scheme.

Speaker: Andrew Beer, University of South Australia, Australia

Andrew Beer is the Executive Dean of UniSA Business.  He comes to this role after working previously as the Dean of Research and Innovation, at the UniSA Business School.  Prior to commencing with UniSA in 2016, Andrew worked at the University of Adelaide and the Flinders University.  He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from the Australian National University.

Professor Beer has served as a Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth, a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Ulster and a Visiting Professor at the University of North Texas.  He was the Chair of the South Australian Government’s Homelessness Strategic Group from 2011 to 2017, and is a Fellow of the Regional Australia Institute.  He served on the College of Experts for the Australian Research Council and is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences.  Professor Beer was Chair of the Regional Studies Association from November 2013 to November 2017.

His research interests include the operation and functioning of Australia’s housing markets (including the provision of housing for persons with a disability), the drivers of regional growth, structural change within the economy and the impacts of an ageing population.  He is currently undertaking research in four major areas: the outcomes of the closure of the Australian automotive industry; the cross national analysis of the leadership of places; the quality and condition of Australia’s housing stock; and the use of services and housing by Australia’s ageing population.  Currently he is collaborating with Professor Markku Sotarauta of Tampere University, Finland as a joint editor on the Handbook of City and Regional Leadership (Edward Elgar) and is in the process of completing a Policy Expo for the Regional Studies Association on place based policy

Speaker/Chair: Fiona McKenzie, Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, Victorian Government, Australia

Fiona McKenzie is a Principal Science Writer for the Victorian Government Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability in Melbourne Australia.

Fiona has more than 25 years experience in applied socio-economic and spatial research within government. She has authored more than 50 research reports including government publications and journal articles. Topics covered include: regional population trends such as youth migration and ageing; implications of regional economic change, and community impacts of drought and flood. Her current role involves bringing social science perspectives to State of Environment reporting.

Fiona’s university qualifications include a recently-completed PhD from the University of South Australia, a Masters degree in Geography from the University of Melbourne and a Masters degree in Regional and Urban Planning Studies from the London School of Economics.  She is a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association and the Royal Geographical Society.

The webinar will focus on how the current pandemic and other megatrends are affecting health, well-being and economic conditions in regions and cities across OECD countries. Two presentations will provide evidence and insights on the main factors of regional resilience to external shocks. Paolo Veneri, Head of Territorial Analysis and Statistics at the OECD, will present on the latest edition of OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance report, which provides a comprehensive assessment on the state of regions and cities in OECD countries. Topics will include health, economic conditions and climate change. Professor Andres Rodriguez-Pose, London School of Economics, will present how regions are able to adopt the drivers of resilience in response to the current pandemic. The following discussion will allow participants and speakers to share insights on how the current crisis and other megatrends may shape new patterns of geographical socio-economic disparities and how this can be addressed.

Speakers:

Paolo Veneri, OECD, France

Paolo Veneri is the Head of the Regional Analysis and Statistics Unit at the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. His work covers several topics connected to urban and regional development, including global urbanisation, migration, well-being measurement, and spatial inequalities. He was and is responsible for several OECD thematic publications including the forthcoming “Cities in the World. A New perspective on urbanisation”, “Regions and Cities at a Glance” editions, “Divided Cities” (2018), “The Geography of Firm Dynamics” (2017), “Making cities work for all” (2016), “How’s Life in your Region?” (2014) and “Rural-urban partnerships: an integrated approach to economic development” (2013). He holds a PhD in Economics and he has published several papers in academic journals within the field of urban economics and regional studies.

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, London School of Economics, UK

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and a part-time Professor of Innovation at the University of Stavanger (Norway). He is past-President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). He is a regular advisor to many international organisations, including the European Commission, the World Bank and numerous UN agencies. He was awarded the 2018 ERSA Prize in Regional Science and has been a holder of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant and of a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award. In 2019 he received Doctorates Honoris Causa from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) and Jönköping University (Sweden). He is an editor of Economic Geography, and sits on the editorial board of 33 other scholarly journals.

Chair: Rhiannon Pugh, CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden

Rhiannon Pugh is a senior lecturer in Innovation Studies, CIRCLE, Lund University. She has a background in regional economic geography and is a regular participant in RSA activities. She is early career section editor for Regional Studies, Regional Sciences which is currently seeking submissions from

In this webinar featuring an RSA-sponsored new book The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as Epochal Regionalisation, author Xiangming Chen will discuss the book’s framework for understanding the BRI’s large-scale and cross-border regional corridors and sub-corridors that have strong connected impacts on globalization, urbanization and development. He will focus on the Djibouti-Ethiopia development corridor as a complex case illustrating the opportunities and challenges for urban and regional development from combining the local adaptation of China’s Port-Park-City (PPC) mode of development, special zone-based industrialization and trans-border freight logistics within and between Djibouti and Ethiopia.

Click here to find out more about the Policy Expo.
Click here to find out more about the Policy Expo Grant Scheme.

Speaker: Xiangming Chen, Trinity College, USA

Xiangming Chen served as the Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut during 2007-2019.  He is currently the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College and a distinguished guest professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and an adjunct professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.  His research focuses primarily on intersections between cities, special economic zones and the global economy. He is a co-author, with Anthony Orum, of The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Blackwell, 2003); the author of As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); the editor of and primary contributor to Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity (University of Minnesota Press, 2009); the lead editor, with Ahmed Kanna, of Rethinking Global Urbanism: Comparative Insights from Secondary Cities (Routledge, 2012); a co-author, with Anthony Orum and Krista Paulsen, of Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience(Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); the lead editor, with Nick Bacon, of Confronting Urban Legacy: Rediscovering Hartford and New England’s Forgotten Cities (Lexington Books, 2013); and a co-editor, with Sharon Zukin and Philip Kasinitz, of Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai (Routledge, 2015; Chinese edition, 2017; Korean edition, 2017). He has conducted policy research and constancy for UNCTAD, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and OECD.

Discussant: Vanessa T. Tang, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Vanessa Tang is a senior policy development consultant and lectures international economics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, RSA. She has consulted for various local and international organizations including the National Research Foundation, KwaZulu-Natal Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, African Development Bank, African Union and African Capacity Building Foundation. She has published numerous papers in government reports, journals and books on issues related to international trade, welfare, tourism, special economic zones and regional economic integration. Her most recent co-edited books are titled Comparative Regionalisms for Development in the 21st Century- Insights from the Global South, published by Routledge, UK and Development and Sustainable Growth of Mauritius, published by Palgrave Macmillan, USA.

Chair: Tyanai Masiya, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Tyanai Masiya is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Public Management and Administration, University of Pretoria. He has written extensively around issues of citizenship and democracy in Zimbabwe, including constitutionalism, democratisation, elections as well as transparency and accountability of the state. Beyond issues of the state, Dr Masiya’s areas of interest also include local government management and service delivery and has research publications  around issues of citizenship and democracy at municipal level. Of specific interest to his research work are institutional innovations in municipal governance that enhance public participation for improved service delivery.

Around the world, C40 Cities connects 97 of the world’s greatest cities to take bold climate action, leading the way towards a healthier and more sustainable future. Representing 700+ million citizens and one quarter of the global economy, mayors of the C40 cities are committed to delivering on the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement at the local level, as well as to cleaning the air we breathe.

Click here for more information about C40 Cities