RSA Early Career Grant Scheme

Previous and Current Grant Holders

Knowledge complexity of renewable energy technologies (RETs) in European regions: a network-based approach.

Climate change constitutes one of the most urgent problems nowadays, in which transition toward sustainability is considered necessary. Energy production is one of the most significant determinants of this transition. Within the literature of sustainability transitions, renewable energy technologies (RETs) constitute innovations aiming to fundamental changes to the existing energy production regime. While transition studies consider knowledge creation and transfer fundamental element of the innovation in RETs, very little is known about the relationship between knowledge creation and the characteristics of regions where RETs emerge. Therefore, my research primarily aims to understand how regional factors affect the development of different technological sub-trajectories in RETS, in terms of knowledge complexity. It will contribute to the existing literature by developing a framework on the relationship between regional characteristics and knowledge complexity in RETs. Empirically, it will provide an original dataset on knowledge network over time and across EEA regions. Finally, it will identify the regional determinants for the development of different technological sub-trajectories in RETs. The study of these regional factors may have important implications in the design and implementation of policies targeted to regions and into the transition process in the energy production field.

Jacopo Canello

Production relocation and subcontractors’ resilience in manufacturing regions: does upgrading help to survive structural shocks?

The aim of this project is to assess how small subcontractors operating in low-tech manufacturing industries update their strategies in response to the decision of client firms to relocate production abroad. The main assumption is that, when small producers become more vulnerable in response to such unexpected shocks, strategic decisions are often taken out of necessity. In such circumstances, firms are forced to upgrade their status quo operations to successfully adapt to the changing economic circumstances. The focus of the empirical investigation is on Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating as subcontractors in the clothing and footwear industry. This empirical study will use a comprehensive approach to identify production relocation, focusing on the impact of both captive offshoring and offshore outsourcing decisions implemented by client firms. The proposed study aims to assess whether ‘forced’ upgrading (i.e. strategy change in response to production relocation shocks) has beneficial effects on subcontractors’ performances. The main findings of this work are intended to inform the current debate on the distributional effects of international fragmentation of production.

I am sincerely honored to be a recipient of the prestigious RSA EC Grant. I have been a proud member of the RSA community since I was a PhD student. During the last few years, I have had the chance to attend several RSA conferences around the world, building my professional network and expanding my social circle. This grant will now help me to explore the consequences of international fragmentation of production on local economies, focusing on the strategies developed by small subcontractors in response to production relocation shocks.

Davide Luca

Does organised crime distort the market for low-carbon energy production? Geographical evidence from Italy.

The transition to low-carbon energy sources is considered as one of the key policies to tackle climate change and, to this aim, many European governments have been supporting the transition to renewable energy through subsidies. Growing anecdotal evidence suggests that the generosity of incentives has attracted the interests of corrupt politicians and criminal organisations, as the wind and solar-energy sectors offer attractive opportunities for mafia to benefit from generous national and EU grant and tax subsidies and to launder illegal money via legal business structures. Yet, no academic research has systematically explored the link between organised crime and the renewable energy sector at the local level. My proposal aims to fill this gap. I plan to combine, in a mixed-method approach, the econometric analysis of innovative GIS data on the geo-location of wind and solar plants across Italy and on the local presence of mafia groups with fieldwork and in-depth interviews.

I am honoured and excited for the support received by the Regional Studies Association. Transnational organised crime has increasing economic impacts around the world. While understanding the economic and policy impacts of mafias is a critical task, the topic has so far received limited attention by regional studies scholars. The Early Career Grant will help me carry out novel GIS and econometric analyses and fund in-depth fieldwork. In so doing, I will consolidate my expertise in the geographies of organised crime and leverage further funding for a larger project on the geographical impacts of mafia organisations on public policy.

Mia M. Bennett

Effects of Indigenous Land Rights on Land Use Decisions

Project summary: Responding to calls within Indigenous communities to more closely examine land claims processes, this project aims to understand whether land tenure in Indigenous communities leads to attitudes and policies favoring development or conservation. I will employ a mixed-methods approach combining globally-scaled satellite night-light imagery and fieldwork in two sites: Alaska, USA, which has a strong Indigenous land tenure regime, and Sarawak, Malaysia, which has a comparably weak one. While a significant amount of research has examined the processes driving land claims, it is not well understood how development proceeds once land claims are won. Furthermore, research regarding Indigenous peoples is often highly localized rather than comparative. Instead, through global analysis and comparison of case studies in North America and Asia, this research will broaden understandings of the relationship between land tenure, development, and conservation at a range of scales. Although Indigenous peoples are often imagined as stewards of the environment, this research asks whether the securing of Indigenous land tenure may actually lead to greater support for industrial development. As Indigenous peoples are gaining greater land rights worldwide, it is critical to understand the possible consequences of this shift in tenure for local livelihoods, the environment, and industry.

Iris Wanzenböck

Knowledge network dynamics in the presence of shocks: A network-based approach to regional resilience

My project aims at understanding how regional knowledge networks can stimulate regional economic resilience. This ambition is motivated by theories considering knowledge networks crucial for regions to gain, after a crisis, impetus towards renewal. Yet, empirical evidence on the dynamics of knowledge networks, their changing compositions or role for regional resilience is scarce. My project aims at (i) providing new indicators to systematically explore network dynamics, (ii) developing a topology to characterize network profiles for European regions, (iii) assessing how these network compositions relate to regional resilience for the case of the economic crisis in 2008. In this project I will develop regional indicators to capture the micro-based dynamics in network compositions and make use of large-scale network data to classify European regions according to these indicators. On this basis, I will investigate whether network re-bundling can explain regional renewal processes after the crisis

I-Chun Catherine Chang

Follow the Money: The Financing and Financialization of Sustainable Urban Projects in China

The recent two decades have witnessed a surge of urban sustainable projects in the global South. Under the guidance of relational geography and “Southern” urbanism, following the movement of planning ideas and policies has been the primary method scholars use to study these evolving urbanism models. This approach, however, largely overlooks the increasing importance of the profit-driven and technology-oriented urban sustainability industry. Nor does it offer insight into the indispensable role of financial arrangements in facilitating and shaping sustainable urbanism models. To address these shortcomings in the endeavor to understand sustainable urbanism, I propose to develop a new research approach that centers on tracing financial and economic interests. Adopting this new approach, this project aims to analyze the financial arrangements underlying Chinese sustainable urban projects, and focuses on two major Sino-Singaporean sustainable urban projects as relational-comparative case studies. This approach helps understand the influence of project funders, the allocation of critical resources, the workings of the urban sustainability industry, and the competition between sustainable urbanism models.

Sylvia Ying He

China’s resource-based cities in the shrinking paradigm: population change, economic revitalisation, and urban liveability

Traditional planning paradigms have long concentrated on urban growth, and governance has been primarily oriented toward strengthening the role of cities as “growth machines” (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Therefore, officials, urban policymakers and planners tend to stigmatise urban shrinkage. In fact, urban growth can reach a point where the negative externalities of development dominate agglomeration economies, reducing the attractiveness of large cities. Given that certain urban problems cannot be easily solved during the growth stage, can they nevertheless be better tackled during the shrinking paradigm in urban development? With a focus on China’s resource-based cities, this research aims to identify whether shrinking cities are better than growing cities at dissolving agglomeration diseconomies and to assess current government policies in terms of their effectiveness at revitalising the local economies of resource-based cities while not sacrificing liveability. Resource-based cities have played a crucial role in China’s economic development, but they have also accumulated various pressing problems such as resource depletion (He, 2014), unbalanced industrial structures, economic downturn, unemployment and environmental pollution. Many local governments of resource-based cities are concerned about the slowdown of economic growth and focus on the economic restructuring of traditional industry (He et al., 2017). However, little is known about whether the urban liveability of these cities has been improved. This study is expected to fill the research gap and provide a broader set of policy recommendations to local governments in China. After all, there are more aspects to defining a liveable city than just economic indicators.

Anne-Marie Jeannet

Political Disaffection in Europe’s Rust Belt Regions

The aim of this project is to understand how a sustained decline in manufacturing has altered democratic life in affected societies. The central question of the project is: How has regional and local deindustrialization brought about a disenchantment with mainstream politics? The project focuses on two possible mechanisms through which deindustrialization produces a climate of political disaffection in a society which are based on opposing (but not mutually exclusive) theoretical traditions. The first mechanism is grounded in institutional theory and sees the origins of political disaffection as a rational process that is politically endogenous. The other possible mechanism is through “bottom-up” gradual cultural change that is exogenous to political institutions. According to this reasoning, deindustrialization may transform social relations, which is widely considered a necessary ingredient for democratic and civic life.This project offers theoretical insights into how, over time, deindustrialization has reshaped the relationship citizens have with national politics.

Thomas Skuzinski

Reimagining metropolitan fragmentation: The Local Autonomy Project

The fragmentation of metropolitan regions into dozens and sometimes hundreds of general-purpose local governments has for decades been at the heart of a debate about optimal metropolitan governance. Scholars have long recognized that fragmentation is a complex concept capable of measurement through multiple dimensions. Early measures focused on raw counts of general-purpose governments within a region, or counts per capita. Recognizing that such measures failed to capture the economic diversity between central cities and among different suburbs, measures began to incorporate political and economic market share through concentration and diffusion. The goal of such measures is to incorporate multiple dimensions of fragmentation to better proxy our expectations for how large and small jurisdictions—in both the economic and political senses—might be expected to behave when resolving tensions between local and regional interests. The general expectation is that higher fragmentation—however it is measured—will lead to a greater likelihood of parochial behaviors in which local interests are prioritized due to the demands of political and fiscal responsiveness on local decision-makers. While these measures have allowed valuable insights into how metropolitan regions function, they do not adequately incorporate the highly heterogeneous autonomy granted by states to local governments. This study proposes a framework and method for objective and subjective measures of local autonomy. The former requires content analysis of constitutional provisions, state legislation, and case law, while the latter relies on large-n survey of local elected and administrative officials, using hypothetical scenarios to determine how these actors perceive the state-local relationship. The primary goals of the research are to use these measures of autonomy as a complement to fragmentation measures, and to explore how local autonomy affects (1) the function and formation of regional governance organizations in metropolitan areas and (2) regional outcomes in policy domains where local and regional tensions can often lead to suboptimal systems, including transportation, land use, and infrastructure.

Thomas Skuzinski is Assistant Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech, and is a Faculty Fellow at the Global Forum for Urban and Regional Resilience at Virginia Tech. His research applies a sociological institutionalist lens to understand how variation in rules, norms, and cultural worldviews shape decision-making in local governments and metropolitan areas. He is especially interested in the nexus of land use, infrastructure, and economic development policies in Rust Belt and Appalachia, and is the founder of the Global Forum Research Network in Post-Industrial Resilience, which seeks to further comparative scholarship of de-industrializing geographies. Dr. Skuzinski’s most recent book, The Risk of Regional Governance (Routledge 2018), used original large-n surveys of local elected officials to explore the cultural cognition of interlocal cooperation in suburban communities in Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan. His current research projects focus on developing indices to measure transportation governance and local autonomy in metropolitan areas in the U.S., and has been funded by the Department of Transportation and Regional Studies Association. He received doctoral and master degrees in urban and regional planning from University of Michigan, and a Juris Doctor from Michigan State University.

Martin Quinn

‘The Search for the Social Contract in England’s Regions’

This project will use Social Contract theory to investigate (the lack of) engagement with sub-national institutions and policies in England.It will do this by using a case study of the Leicestershire region and analysing data through the lens of Social Contract Theory (principally through the work of Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke). The project is one of the first to use Social Contract Theory to analyse regional studies data and this will develop our empirical understanding of how sub-national governance can engage with the local population and business community in these ways to form the networks that drive local economies. The use of Social Contract Theory allows for new theoretical insights which will extend regional studies theories relating to network building, trust and regional leadership. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau argued that it is only when it is clear to the population that a government or institution can provide them with protection and prosperity that they will submit to their authority.
Read more about this research here: https://regions.regionalstudies.org/ezine/article/between-liberty-and-regional-leviathan-establishing-engagement-with-local-governance-in-leicestershire/

“Perhaps the biggest impact of the RSA EC grant on my career has been the confidence I have gained from being awarded the grant. Since winning the grant I have gone on to secure a number of other grants with colleagues meaning that I am now fully ensconced in the research community at both my institution and the wider academic community. Though this I have been involved in the launch of the INCITE (Innovation and Creativity in Transformational Economies) Research Group which I now co-direct. We have gone on to carry out extensive research in Vietnam, resulting in collaborations with local academics and Government Ministries on the economic development of Vietnam as well as emergent research in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan where the knowledge I developed during the RSA grant directly informs our work. In addition, I am now working with the Anthropocene Research Group based in the Geology Department at Leicester on projects exploring how the scientific data on the climate crisis can be translated into public policies to address that crisis and gain the support of the public and business. These research activities and the associated grant capture led to my successful promotion to Associate Professor at the start of the 2019/20 academic year. I do not believe that any of the research work I have done since 2018 would have been possible without the RSA EC grant.”

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Grants

This award is open to individual applicants in their early career (five years maximum between the date showing on the 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 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. $12,700; c. €11,200). 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 EC Handbook.

Please send your Expression of Interest application and queries to ecgrant@regionalstudies.org

Forthcoming deadline: 28th May 2020

A two stage application process is used for the RSA Early Career Grant. The Expression of Interest should be a maximum of 3 pages long and should include the following (see details in the handbook):

Applicant information details: Title, name, surname
RSA membership number
Postal address
Telephone number and email
Name of Higher Education Institution (HEI)
Title of the research project
Timings of the research
Details of research and the advances it is hoped to make
Brief overview of costs and budget

Apply for Early Career grant scheme