RSA Early Career Research Grant Scheme

Previous and Current Grant Holders

Thi (Alice) Ngo

“Tigress” or “Cat”? Women Entrepreneurs in Emerging Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

This research project responds to recent calls for greater attention to differences in entrepreneurial networking behaviour and processes among women. Existing literature has not fully unveiled the dynamic and evolving nature of their strategic network formation within the compressed timeframe of entrepreneurial support organisation (ESO) programs.

In high-uncertainty environments, like early-stage venture development and the competitive landscape of ESOs, women entrepreneurs must actively cultivate and reconfigure their networks to strengthen social capital, establish legitimacy, signal competence, and mobilise resources for their ventures.

This study aims to (i) investigate the evolution of women’s networks during their residency in ESOs, and (ii) identify the mechanisms underlying the heterogeneity in networking behaviours. Our research questions are: “How do women’s networks evolve over time?” and “What factors and mechanisms drive this process?”

“I am truly honoured to receive the RSA Early Career Research Grant. This funding will support fieldwork data collection and help me build meaningful connections with practitioners and entrepreneurs in Vietnam, an emerging market. It will enable the research to explore the strategic network formation of women entrepreneurs. The findings will contribute to a deeper understanding of these dynamics, ultimately helping to foster a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem and promote local and regional economic development.”

Principal Investigator: Thi (Alice) Ngo

Alice formerly worked at the University of Manchester and University of Huddersfield before joining the University of Sheffield. She worked as an intern at the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris, France in 2018 during her PhD journey. Her research has garnered recognition at international conferences, including the prestigious Best Developmental Paper Award in the Entrepreneurship Track at the BAM 2023 Conference and the Early Career Prize Winner in the Association of Heterodox Economics (AHE) Conference in 2018.

Ozge Yenigun

Leaving No One Behind? Navigating Regional Socio-Economic and Employment Impacts in the Context of Just Transition

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy is crucial for sustainability and climate resilience, but it requires significant transformation, particularly in vulnerable regions with economic and social disadvantages. The purpose of this project is to analyse the socio-economic impacts of transitioning to a low-carbon economy on vulnerable regions and to assess the effectiveness of policies and initiatives designed to support affected communities, with a particular focus on Ireland’s Midlands.

Building on previous research highlighting how Midlands communities feel “left behind” due to historical underinvestment and marginalization, the study will investigate: a) whether current policies, including the national just transition framework and EU JTF interventions, align with the socio-economic and skill development needs of local communities, b) the role of current programs and funded projects in addressing short-term needs related to workforce training and re-employment, as well as fostering longer-term economic diversification and community resilience.

This is a mixed-methods study, combining quantitative analysis of key economic and demographic data with qualitative interviews. The quantitative analysis will analyse socio-economic data to assess shifts in employment, income, and demographics within JTF-targeted counties and municipal districts in the Midlands. In-depth interviews with community organizations, affected workers, and local officials will provide insights into how funded initiatives support local communities facing job losses, population decline, and shifting skill needs. The findings will contribute to broader discussions on just transitions, highlighting the gaps between policy objectives and practical implementation, and providing recommendations to better align funded initiatives with community needs.

I am thrilled to have received the RSA Early Career Grant for my research on just transitions and regional development. I am very excited about initiating this project which will illuminate how large-scale environmental and economic transitions interact with local realities. I hope the findings will contribute to broader discussions on effective policy interventions for just transitions, leading to new collaborations within the RSA network and the wider academic community.

Principal Investigator: Ozge Yenigun

Ozge Yenigun is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin. Before joining UCD, she worked as a Clinical Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also earned her Ph.D. in 2023. She currently teaches a variety of subjects in urban and regional planning, including GIS, theory, history and practice of spatial planning, urban and regional economics, and property development. Her research interests include planning for sustainable economic development, just transitions and regional development, and social and economic mobility and inclusion for marginalized communities. She has received several grants and fellowships, including the Fulbright Grant.

Kaitlin Alper

Governing Diverse Polities: How Regional Language Shapes Political Attitudes

Research on democratization, state-building and community formation stresses the importance of language and identity for building cohesive polities and fostering democratic legitimacy; and research shown that regionalism and regional identity have consequences for people’s political behavior and attitudes, including anti-democratic sentiment. Language is a major aspect of regional distinctiveness, and linguistic and psychological research has shown that language can shape people’s perceptions and the salience of different social conflicts, such as ethnic divides. Consequently, national governments have historically viewed language policy as integral for building and maintaining stable institutions. This project aims to link individuals’ regional language use to their political attitudes and behavior. Specifically, I will seek to test how the use of a regional language shapes a) attitudes towards democratic institutions at the regional, national and European levels, b) preferences over the territorial structure of governance and c) voting behavior. This is a mixed methods study, combining a survey experiment and qualitative interviews. Both the experiment and the interviews will focus on Catalonia as an exemplary case of a region in which regional identity is consistently salient and tension between the region and the central state is historically persistent.

“I am both honored and excited to have received the RSA early career grant for my research on regional language use and political attitudes. I have been working on developing this project, which merges many of my research interests and advances my research agenda, for several years. Regional language use is an understudied aspect of regional distinctiveness, and I hope that The results of this study will help in understanding the heterogenous needs of citizens living in these regionally-diverse countries, and provide potential solutions for those wishing to govern linguistically and culturally diverse states.”

Principal Investigator: Kaitlin Alper

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies (DaWS) at the University of Southern Denmark. In addition to teaching courses, I am involved in a project focused on the Politics of Insecurity led by Dr. Peter Starke. My primary research interests are in comparative welfare states and social policy, economic and social inequality, and the political economy of multilevel governance and decentralization in advanced industrial democracies. My work has been published in Social Forces and West European Politics. More information about my research can be found here.

Ridhotama Shanti Ottemoesoe

Do rural banks help women’s microenterprises? [A case from Indonesia]

The low value and number of loans extended to women entrepreneurs in micro sectors is often associated with societal gender inequality. Previous studies have shown that in patriarchal societies, where gender bias against women is stronger, women tend not to apply for loans, relying instead on informal financial institutions. The extent to which gender stereotyping among loan officers contributes to this phenomenon has received little attention, with previous studies tending to look at gender and credit relations from the borrower’s perspective.

The aim of this research is to identify possible gender bias in lending markets and how it manifests in the banking sector, especially in rural banks. Rural banks in Indonesia have been mandated to support micro businesses; however, as small institutions, they have basic technology or tend to conduct manual assessments, increasing the subjectivity of loan application assessments. This research will look at the impact of gender stereotypes on loan applications and determine whether negative stereotypes tend to influence appraisals. Understanding loan officers’ gender biases might explain the differences in how analysts consider similar applications submitted by different genders. Lastly, this research will examine whether this bias tends to normalise when the credibility of the borrower increases.

Emma Ormerod

(Re)Setting the Agenda: Investigating the Gendered Power-relations in the Leadership of Regional Development and Policy-making

This project will challenge the masculine-coded forms of place-leadership in regional development by closely examining the different approaches to leadership that exist within regions, and ways in which different conceptualisations of power are enacted and shape policy-making and development visions.

“I am really pleased to receive this Early Career Grant and the support of the Regional Studies Association to undertake new research which will deepen our understandings of intersecting inequalities, particularly as women globally continue to be denied equal opportunities to make decisions and shape urban and regional life.”

Principal Investigator: Emma Ormerod

Emma Ormerod is a Lecturer in Economic Geography in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development (CURDS) within the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. Emma has two main strands of research interests, firstly the relationship between housing and the economy through increasingly entrepreneurial forms of housing governance, and secondly, gender inequality in local and regional development. Both of these areas of work raise critical questions about transparency, ‘publicness’, politics, power and wider democracy.

Paula Prenzel

Staying in or Moving out? – Quality of Life, Interregional Migration Decisions and Covid-19

Although COVID-19 is a global health emergency, it is experienced in local contexts, which may not all be equally equipped to offer good quality of life in pandemic conditions. Exogenous shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and associated “lockdown” policies, may lead to a re-evaluation of the costs and benefits of specific places as residential location, e.g., because certain location factors or amenities suddenly shift in relevance. How did the COVID-19 pandemic and “lockdown” policies affect the costs and benefits of residential locations? And how may this be reflected in patterns of migration flows and settlement structure? This project aims to investigate the role of quality of life in interregional migration and, through this lens, to examine potential consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for urban and rural population growth.

The project analyses the case of Germany using two methodological perspectives: first, based on secondary data of aggregate migration flows and second, for individual decision-making via an online experiment in the context of spatial choice modelling. The contribution of this project is, on the one hand, to provide empirical evidence on the consequences of COVID-19 for migration and, by extension, for urban and rural population growth. On the other hand, with an experimental approach, this project implements a methodology that is still rarely applied in the field of geography but could support our understanding of decision-making processes for migration behaviour. Thus, the project offers empirical evidence on socio-spatial consequences of COVID-19 and contributes to the migration literature, but also aims to engage with the interdisciplinary potential of integrating more experimental approaches into geographic research.

“Receiving the RSA Early Career Grant is a great opportunity to strengthen my research and focus on a topic that I am very excited about. There is still much to learn about the consequences of COVID-19 on migration and the grant gives me the chance to explore this while also developing a new and interdisciplinary aspect of my research. I am honoured and very grateful that this project will be supported by the RSA.”

Principal Investigator: Paula Prenzel

Paula Prenzel is Assistant Professor of Regional Development at the University of Greifswald, Germany. She studied economics and regional studies in Maastricht and Groningen and holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the London School of Economics. Her research engages with consequences of demographic change, diversity and migration for local economic development, focusing on how changes in population size and composition may shape regional economic and innovative processes.

Enrico Vanino

Renewable Energy Transition and the Local Economic Development of Lagging-behind Regions

Renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly important in the energy mix, making up to 35% of the electricity production in the EU in 2019, with wind power accounting for 35% of the total electricity generated from renewable sources. There is a need to better understand how the rapidly growing renewable energy sector could promote local economic development in peripheral and lagging-behind regions, where abundant natural resources useful for the generation of green renewable energy are located. This research project will investigate how investment in renewable energy generation could offer opportunities for the redevelopment of local economies in lagging-behind regions. This could allow many peripheral regions, once dependent on mature agriculture and manufacturing industries, to regenerate their local economies by sustainably transitioning towards new higher added-value green industries. By mapping the location of offshore wind farms and link these to onshore local communities through the location of ports and other servicing infrastructures, we will develop an econometric analysis to evaluate the impact of offshore wind farms on the economic development of local onshore coastal communities in the UK. This will be the first study providing empirically robust analysis at a granular level on this topic, advancing existing knowledge by following two paths. First, it will consider the current impact of this transition on the economic development of places, analysing employment and productivity growth in local industries directly affected, as well as the magnitude of potential externalities along the supply-chain. Secondly, it will investigate the role of renewable energy for the dynamic industrial path development of lagging-behind regions, considering how it could foster regional branching and transition to new but related industries, pooling skills and expertise from other declining manufacturing industries, and creating new green jobs by retraining and upskilling workers. This is particularly relevant for the UK, where offshore wind is becoming the main source of green energy, and could positively contribute to rebalancing the economy, one of the most spatially unequal in the OECD, in line with the UK Government flagship policy on levelling-up.

“I am honoured of the support received from the Regional Studies Association Early-Career grant. The grant will support the development of this promising research project, investigating how investment in renewable energy generation could offer opportunities for the redevelopment of local economies in lagging-behind regions. I hope that, thanks to the RSA support, I will be able to provide important insights to understand how the rapidly growing renewable energy sector could promote local economic development in peripheral and lagging-behind regions. The Early Career grant will help me bridging together economics and GIS methodologies to provide empirically robust analysis at a granular level. This will give me the opportunity to consolidate my knowledge and expertise in these fields, and to partner with the ORE Catapult to inform stakeholders about the complementarities between the Net-Zero and the Levelling-Up policies.”

Ersilia Verlinghieri

Exploring the potential of a postgrowth-inspired agenda for urban transport planning after COVID-19

Private cars’ dominant role in urban transport imposes huge health and environmental costs on cities worldwide, with the greatest share paid by more vulnerable citizens, including children and ethnic minorities. Traffic fatalities, reduced space for safe social interactions together with dangerous levels of air-pollution and carbon-emissions are key issues for cities struggling with both a public health and climate emergency. However, reducing the number of private cars in urban environment it’s proven to still be a substantial challenge for planning and policy, as it requires a radical reconfiguration of infrastructure, lifestyles, cultures as well as of transport planning and policy frameworks, politics and economy. The reduced capacity of public transport linked to the Covid19 pandemic risks to exacerbate the situation.

Theoretical insights showed that postgrowth-inspired, slower, and more sociable mobilities, combined with the rearrangement of municipal land use and economies, have the potential to help in this direction, and catalyse a substantial reduction in car-dependency. But how can this be done in practice? How can such a radical idea help re-shaping urban planning and policy making?

Although explicit examples of a comprehensive post-growth agenda for urban planning are still unavailable, in Barcelona and Turin, the concept of post-growth has been often circulating in public debates and featured also in the political manifestos of the latest municipal administrations. At the same time, both cities have adopted radical changes in their mobility systems, opening up wide portions of public space to slower forms of mobilities and away from private cars. They represent therefore two paradigmatic case studies to better understand the potential and criticalities of a post-growth inspired approach to transport planning.

Using interviews and focus groups, and inspired by Urban Political Ecology as a theoretical framework, I will analyse the complex interrelations of actors, institutions, practices, and discourses behind the framing and implementation of such interventions which aimed to challenge car dominance in the two cities, tracing how these have been influenced and shaped by ideas around post-growth. At the same time, I will consider how ideas around post-growth are contested, reframed and re-shaped during this process, and what their adoption means for different groups of the population.

This analysis will help to better understand the possibilities for, practical constraints on, and social implications of extensively adopting post-growth inspired planning approaches and their concrete contribution to tackling urban crisis, starting from rethinking urban transport, drawing key lessons for other western cities aiming to tackle car-dependency.

“I am honoured to be able, thanks to the RSA support, to conduct research on this topic. Cities are facing great environmental and social challenges with car-dominance being often overlooked as a main driver of urban inequalities. I have been developing the idea behind this project for a long time and I sincerely appreciate the trust by the RSA in its value and contribution”.

Emma Colven

Speculating on Jakarta’s Future: Real Estate and Water Crisis in Jakarta

The aim of this project is to understand the role of speculative urban development in generating water crises, and how water crises in turn shape real estate markets in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city. I will use mixed methods, combining remote sensing analysis with interviews, surveys, and participant observation. While the proliferation of large-scale, private real estate developments under conditions of speculative urbanism has been well studied, their environmental implications have been given less academic attention. Furthermore, the literature on financialization and speculation has not sufficiently examined how nature poses barriers to these processes. This research will elucidate the co-production of transformations in water regimes and land markets and make a valuable contribution to geographical understandings of the impact of speculative development on urban ecologies. While Jakarta’s experience is particularly acute, continued urbanization coupled with climate change will intensify water shortages and flooding in urban metropolitan regions around the world. Consequently, water crises will constitute one of the primary urban planning challenges of the twenty first century. This research will contribute a better understanding of how water crises emerge, and how cities can equitably plan for and mitigate against them.

I am honored to receive this grant to support my research on the intersections of speculative urbanism and water crisis in Jakarta. With the support of the Regional Studies Association, I will be able to undertake extensive fieldwork for this project, which will be foundational to my future work and research trajectory.

Moritz Breul

Setting the course for lignite mining regions in transition – Unpacking the pre-formation phase of path creation

The current lignite exit in Germany has created a situation in which the dominant industrial path in lignite mining regions is removed and immense structural funds are turning these regions into playgrounds for new path creation. But which actors and processes shape the formulation of new path development? While existing research made great progress in retrospectively understanding path creation, the retrospective view overlooks why other potential paths did not successfully emerge. At this pre-formation stage, the design of policy interventions can play a decisive role for enabling or constraining regional path development as illustratively shown by the priority setting of certain domains within the smart specialization strategy. Therefore, this research project aims to investigate to what extent the configuration of regional policy-making processes in the Lausitz and Rhineland shape the direction of regional transformation strategies – i.e. the mechanisms of why the promotion of a certain path is selected over another. I plan to reconstruct key events in the formulation of the two regional transformation strategies by two means: First, I will reconstruct the policy networks using social network analysis techniques. Second, I will conduct expert interviews with various participants involved in the policy network to gather information about the governance of the priority setting, the agency and interactions of the various participants involved in the policy network as well as reasons for non-participation. This will show how diversification domains were developed and selected over others and consequently reveal the factors that have shaped the outcome of this multi-actor policy process.

“I am very honored for being awarded for the Regional Studies Association Early Career Grant. The support by the RSA will help me to explore how the configuration of regional policy-making processes shapes the direction of regional transformation strategies in lignite mining regions. I am looking forward to this great opportunity and being part of this vibrant community.”

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Grants

Watch the recording of our webinar and learn more about the Early Career Research Grant Scheme – Grants and Funding: An introduction to the Early Career Research Grant Scheme by the RSA with Stuart Dawley (University of Newcastle, UK), I-Chun Catherine Chang (Macalester College, USA) and Jacopo Canello (University of Groningen, The Netherlands).

This award is open to individual applicants in their early career (five years maximum between the date showing on their PhD certificate and the application deadline). Applicants must be based within an eligible higher education institution and must be a current, early career member of the RSA and throughout the duration of the grant (please note that applicants may apply for membership at the same time as applying for the grant).

The RSA Early Career Research Grant (EC) is provided to support a discrete piece of regional studies and/or regional science research.

The value of the grant is up to £10,000 (c. $13,300; c. €11,800). The grant has a maximum time span of 18 months and reporting conditions apply. The full Terms and Conditions governing the grant are available in the Early-Career-Handbook. Instructions and link for applications can be found at the bottom of this page.

Please click here for the updated prioritised research themes.

Application Deadline (Expression of Interest): Spring 2026

A two stage application process is used for the RSA Research Grant Schemes. In the first round, applicants are asked to submit an expression of interest. Shortlisted applicants from this first round will then be asked to submit a full proposal.

If you want to apply for the Early Career Grant, please complete the online application process. To access this, please login to RSA Lounge, and click on Community, Grants. If your membership status is eligible, you will see the link to apply for an Early Career Grant.

If you have any questions or need any help with the submission form, please send us an email to ecgrant@regionalstudies.org

To see about our grant holder research projects and to watch their videos explaining their research, please click on the Previous and Current Grant Holders grant holder names on the lower left of this page.

Anne Marie Jeannet, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milan, gives advice to those considering applying for grant funding.

Jacopo Canello is the 2019 EC grant holder. In the video below, he shares his top tips for grant applications.

2019 EC Grant winner Maria Tsouri shares her tips below:

RSA Early Career Grant holder Davide Luca shares his top tips for applying for grants:

RSA Early Career Grant holder I-Chun Catherine Chang shares her top tips for grant applications:

RSA Early Career Grant holder Iris Wanzenböck shares her top tips for grant applications below:

Early Career Research Grant Scheme

Award Month

Location

Thi (Alice) Ngo

Award Month

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Ozge Yenigun

Award Month

Location

Kaitlin Alper

Award Month

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Ridhotama Shanti Ottemoesoe

Award Month

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Emma Ormerod

Award Month

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Paula Prenzel

Award Month

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Enrico Vanino

Award Month

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Ersilia Verlinghieri

Exploring the potential of a postgrowth-inspired agenda for urban transport planning after COVID-19

Award Month

Location

Emma Colven

Speculating on Jakarta’s Future: Real Estate and Water Crisis in Jakarta

Award Month

Location

Moritz Breul

Setting the course for lignite mining regions in transition – Unpacking the pre-formation phase of path creation

Application Deadline (Expression of Interest): Spring 2026