RSA Regions Cities Industry Webinar Series

In this webinar we explore the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure (SI) in ‘left behind places’ (LBPs) through a case study a former mining village in northern England. We address the understudied affective dimensions of ‘left-behindness’. Seeking to move beyond a narrowly economistic of reading LBPs, our framework emphasises the importance of place attachments and the consequences of their disruption; considers LBPs as ‘moral communities’, seeing the making of SI as an expression of this, views the unmaking of SI through the lens of ‘root shock’ and explains efforts at remaking SI in terms of the articulation of ‘radical hope’.

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Speaker: John Tomaney, Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, UK

John Tomaney is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science. John’s work has been funded by research councils and foundations, international organisations, national, regional and local governments and non-governmental organisations in the UK and elsewhere. He is co-investigator  on the project  The ‘Beyond ‘Left Behind’ Places: Understanding Demographic and Socio-economic Change in Peripheral Regions in France, Germany and the UK’ project is funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, L’Agence nationale de la recherche and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. He contributes regularly to the broadcast and print media. He was a member of the UK2070 Commission on regional inequalities, chaired by Lord Kerslake, and is Trustee of Redhills: the Durham Miners’ Hall. He tweets at: @johntomaney.

Chair: Natasha Vall, Teesside University, UK

Natasha Vall is Professor of Urban and Cultural History and the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Teesside University. She specialises in urban renewal in industrial and postindustrial cities. Her current work is focussed on the development of an innovative and sustainable infrastructure that brings together community members, policymakers, researchers, and businesses to develop a research agenda that will effect real change in the Tees Valley region. Her projects aligned to this work have been funded by UKRI, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Timings for this webinar:

• 15.00 GMT
• 16.00 CET

More information to follow shortly

More information to follow shortly

Timings for this webinar:

• 17.00 BST
• 18.00 CEST

This webinar will discuss the papers from the recently published book Questioning Planetary Illiberal Geographies: Territory, Space and Power, the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Territory, Politics, Governance.

This book engages with current debates on ‘planetary urbanization’ and the nature of urban political theory but notably considers the implications of illiberalism on space, territory, and power. Such a focus is timely, as illiberalism (across various settings and terrains) is producing, and embedded in, increasingly complex, hybrid, multi-scalar, non-linear, and globally networked flows.

Through ordinary explorations drawn from diverse empirical case studies (China, the United States, India, South Korea, and Singapore) and via mixed methodologies, the chapters in this volume seek to advance theory that moves beyond assumptions and certainties of what illiberalism is, how and where it operates, what it looks like, and how it is experienced and embodied in different contexts, offline and online. Chapters critically reflect upon themes like authoritarianism and the spatialization of illiberal power, from the grassroots up to national governments, and stress the need to move beyond normative understandings and portrayals of these terms and concepts. Presciently, this volume looks back on recent history, pre-dating the Covid-19 pandemic and some of the shocking political transformations now underway: as such, the chapters offer a valuable lens to critically consider issues like public health policies, surveillance and policing, borders and bordering, and activism and resistance.

Speakers:

Jason Luger, Northumbria University, UK

Jason Luger is Assistant Professor of Human Geography at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. His research focuses on the production, experience and contestation of urban space, especially the relationship between urban space and illiberalism. Jason’s research draws from comparative urbanism ethnography, and theories from across urban, political, social, and cultural geographies.

Ashima Sood, Anant National University, India

Currently Associate Professor at Anant National University, Ashima Sood studies urban policy and governance in the Indian context. Sood’s research lies at the intersection of institutional economics and urban and development studies. It combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine privatized forms of urban governance and informal public spaces in India. Sood’s research has received recognition, fellowships and grants from international and national funders such as the Azim Premji University Foundation, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, the Centre de Science Humaines and the India Foundation for the Arts, among others. Her work has been published in scholarly outlets such as Urban Studies, Cities, Territory, Politics and Governance, alongside many others. She studied at the Delhi School of Economics, the University of California-Davis and Cornell University and was Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development over April-July 2022.  She is also Co-Director of the Centre for Urbanism and Cultural Economics at Anant National University. She is the Winter Term 2023 Visiting Professor at the Carleton University Institute of Political Economy.

Loraine Kennedy, CNRS, France

Loraine Kennedy is a CNRS Research Director and member of the Center for South Asian Studies (CEIAS) in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Her most recent publications include a co-edited volume, India’s Greenfield Urban Future. The Politics of Land, Planning and Infrastructure (Orient Blackswan, 2023) and a co-edited special issue “Engaging the Urban from the Periphery”, SAMAJ South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (2021). She serves as a trustee of the Glasgow-based Urban Studies Foundation.

Sam Tynen, George Washington University, USA

Sam Tynen holds a PhD in Human Geography from University of Colorado Boulder. He lived in China for a total of five years from 2009-2017. His research focuses on state-building, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in Asia. His publications have appeared in Political Geography, Geopolitics, and Geographical Review, among others. His forthcoming book with IB Tauris is titled Fear, Hope and Survival in Xinjiang: Uyghur Life in China’s Military Police State. Learn more at samtynen.com.

Janika Kuge, University of Freiburg, Germany

Janika Kuge is research and teaching assistant in political and economic geographies at University of Freiburg, Germany since 2016. Her PhD follows the conflicts around Sanctuary policy in the US from a relational state theory approach. She is interested in questions of political legal geographies at the nexus with state theory and migration.

Kristin Sziarto, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

Chair: Klaus Dodds, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Professor Klaus Dodds is the Director of Research for the School of Life Sciences and Environment and Director of Living Sustainably at Royal Holloway. In October 2012, he was elected Academician (now Fellow) of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). He researches in the areas of environmental and health geopolitics, ice humanities and the international governance of the Antarctic and the Arctic. In 2020-1 he was visiting Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies Loughborough University and in 2021-22 will be visiting professor at the College of Europe, Warsaw teaching disinformation, misinformation and mal-information in geopolitics, health, and border politics. His latest book is Border Wars (Ebury and Diversion Publishers 2021).

Wednesday 22nd February 2023

14.00 GMT

15.00 CET

This webinar will explore important research questions about the role and position of small and medium-sized towns.

In many countries across the world, small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) play an important role in the urban system. Yet, they are often overlooked and undervalued when compared to large cities. In recent years, however, scholarly attention towards SMSTs has increased, and this work has led to a myriad of findings that encourage us to rethink some consolidated concepts and theories about urban development. In this webinar we focus in particular on a relational perspective of small and medium-sized towns, and we want to clarify that we need to go beyond population sized when studying smaller urban places.

This session will begin with a short presentation of the newly published book “A Research Agenda for Small and Medium-Sized Towns” with which we will outline the key challenges of current research on the topic. We then will move on to two to three input presentations by chapter authors of the book. We close the session with a final discussion that is also open to questions from the audience.

Speakers:

• Presentation of key insights from the book A Research Agenda for Small and Medium-Sized Towns, Heike Mayer, University of Bern, Switzerland
• The role of agglomeration shadow and borrowing sized when focussing on SMSTs in the larger spatial context, Evert Meijers, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
• The role of identity and urban-rural relationships when embedding small and medium-sized towns in the larger spatial context, Annett Steinführer, Thünen Institute, Germany
• Implications of digitalization for research on SMSTs, Koen Salemink, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Chair

• Michela Lazzeroni, University of Pisa, Italy

Speakers:

Heike Mayer, University of Bern, Switzerland

Heike Mayer is professor of economic geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Her research is in local and regional economic development with a focus on dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship, place making and sustainability. Heike started her academic career in the United States, where she completed a Ph.D. in Urban Studies (Portland State University) and held a tenured professorship at Virginia Tech University. She is author of the book Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Second Tier Regions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham), co-author of Small Town Sustainability (Birkhäuser Press, Basel), and co-author of The Political Economy of Capital Cities (Routledge, London).

Evert Meijers, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Evert is Associate Professor at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University. He has a passion and reputation for innovative research and teaching in Urban and Regional Studies. In his research, he creatively combines insights from economic and urban geography, spatial planning, environmental studies, regional science, urban economics, cultural geography, media studies, regional studies and policy sciences in order to develop empirically underpinned territorial strategies that make cities and regions better able to satisfy human and societal needs. He is committed to knowledge dissemination through actively seeking co-operation with communities, governments, industry and other scholars. His work has appeared in many different journals and books, and has attracted attention in academia and policy practice. He recently received several best paper awards and acquired many larger and smaller research grants, including highly-competed for personal grants, and has a track record in leading research teams. Before moving to Utrecht University, he was Research Director of the Urbanism Department at Delft University of Technology and associated with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions.

Annett Steinführer, Thünen Institute, Germany

Annett Steinführer is a senior researcher at the Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute in Braunschweig which is the German Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries. She is a rural scholar with a background in urban sociology and geography. Her current research projects focus on the role of migration and staying in rural housing biographies, on everyday lives in peripheralized regions, on rural public services as well as on social and demographic changes in small towns. She is one of the co-founders of the German Informal Network of Small-Town Research and was co-editor of the Kompendium Kleinstadtforschung (2021, in German).

Koen Salemink, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Koen Salemink is Assistant Professor in Cultural Geography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Originally he was trained as a human geographer and planner and a cultural geographer. Koen’s objective has been to combine insights from economic, social and cul- tural geographies to better understand how  communities deal with social and digital exclusion. In his research he focuses on rural areas and non-metropolitan regions. Koen has been part of several European research projects (e.g. INTERREG 4B and 5B, Horizon 2020), enabling him to acquire insights into how digital rural development works in different countries. His work has appeared in the Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Environment and Planning A and Local Economy. He is also European Editor for Local Economy.

Chair: Michela Lazzeroni, University of Pisa, Italy

Michela Lazzeroni is associate professor in Economic and Political Geography in the Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge at the Univetsity of Pisa (Italy) where she completed a PhD in Urban and Regional Studies. Her main research interests concern the geography of knowledge and innovation, the impact of the fourth industrial revolution between opportunities and inequalities, the relation between university and territorial development,  urban resilience and local strategies based on cultural heritage and food, smart urbanism and AI city.  About small and medium-sized towns, she has published “Industrial decline and resilience in small towns: Evidence from three European case studies,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (111(2), 2020), “Beyond ‘town and gown’: The role of the university in small and medium-sized cities,” Industry and Higher Education (29(1), 2015) as co-author, and “The territorial approach to cultural economy: New opportunities for the development of small towns,” European Planning Studies (21(4), 2013) as co-author. She is member of the board of the Society of Geographic Studies (Italy).

Timings for this webinar:

• 13.00 BST
• 14.00 CEST