Research Network summary
EdgeNet is the Regional Studies Association research network on peripheries (and why they matter). We advocate and amplify impactful research on the diverse places and regionsthat are ‘non-core’ or on the ‘edge’ of core activities, including but not limited to rural, peri-urban, post-industrial, de-populating and remote areas. Advancing beyond narrow views of ‘lagging regions’ and ‘left-behind places’, we explore new approaches to peripherality as multi-dimensional and multi-scalar. EdgeNet reflects the growing community of researchers who are shaping critical conversations on edgy matters within – and beyond – Regional Studies. Together, we take up three key tasks. First, we work to theorise and debate the social, spatial, economic, environmental, and temporal processes that shape how peripheries are imagined and experienced. Second, we investigate peripheral places empirically, from revealing extractive core-periphery relationships to showcasing innovative possibilities. Third, we share learning on just alternatives for future policy and practice.
Aims and ambitions of the Research Network
EdgeNet aims to advance, advocate, and amplify impactful research on peripheral places and regions, broadly conceived. We work for an active and inclusive research community, representing diverse expertise and edgy thinking, that can contribute to scholarship, inform policy and practice, and help regions themselves to thrive on their own terms. EdgeNet’s specific objectives are to:
- Advance academic and policy conversations beyond limited views of ‘lagging regions’ and ‘left-behind places’.
- Bring diverse research expertise together in an inclusive community of practice, which welcomes perspectives from geographical, disciplinary, and theoretical edges, and offers a shared repertoire of research tools and methods.
- Facilitate opportunities for knowledge exchange, which engage with and learn from multiple regions in global contexts.
- Grow the presence and profile of research on peripheral places and regions within the Regional Studies Association, including attracting new members to the Regional Studies community and enhancing connections to other scholarly societies.
- Engage policy and practice audiences to share evidence, experience and expertise, and co-produce future challenge-oriented and/or place-based research programmes.
- Foster future edgy scholarship through opportunities for PhD and early career researchers.
EdgeNet responds to the growing need to reinvigorate the study of peripheral places and regions. In recent years, political and academic attention to so-called ‘left-behind places’ and ‘geographies of discontent’ has ignited new interest in peripheral regions and policy interventions. Yet these headline narratives collapse complexity and obscure the diverse places that are ‘non-core’ or on the ‘edge’ of core activities, including but not limited to rural, peri-urban, post-industrial, de-populating and remote areas. That too many places have not mattered for too long calls for edgy new research on, from, and for peripheral places and regions.
EdgeNet seeks to understand peripheries as multi-dimensional and multi-scalar, in space and over time. Neither peripheries nor the many terms research and policy use to describe them (e.g., ‘non-core, ‘edge’, ‘margin’, ‘remote’, ‘less-developed’) are uniform. Not all, indeed, are ‘left-behind’. Some core-periphery relationships are writ large in colonial histories and global economic flows. Some peripheries – like remote northern Nordic regions – divide and re-divide into cores and peripheries of their own.
When broadly conceived, peripherality is not a niche research interest in Regional Studies. Yet this rich diversity means that much research remains disparate and disconnected – a session on old industrial regions here, a panel on rural development there. Critical conversations and opportunities to share knowledge and enhance impact are all too easily missed. EdgeNet fills the gap by creating a cross-cutting research community within Regional Studies. Together, we are edgier.
By cohering research, EdgeNet is positioned to build impact in policy and practice. Uneven development has long been a regional policy concern, but a decade of ballot-box disruptions and still unfolding crises from climate to COVID-19 have shaken up what might have seemed old ground. Regional Studies has already stepped up on these themes, and events and initiatives (such as the Cohesion Policy Network) have established policy audiences. However, peripheries are often still presented primarily as problems for policy to solve.
Understanding how policies – for climate and energy, for example – interact with peripheries and sharing how peripheries can be sentinels at the forefront of societal change and innovation offer exciting opportunities to exchange knowledge with new non-academic audiences.
EdgeNet convenors and contributors are experienced in applied research communication and interactive dialogue with policymakers and practitioners. Beyond disseminating the research state of the art, EdgeNet aims to integrate ways of working across the network that invite feedback from policy audiences (at regional and national scale) and engage with challenges from place-based practitioners. For example, by exploringchallenges faced by small, shrinking and remote municipalities, EdgeNet can offer potential guidance on implementing sustainable, progressive planning processes amidst rapid transformations and multi-scalar (dis)investments. Through the unique opportunity to compare ongoing processes in different peripheral contexts, EdgeNet will provide new knowledge on how different places can formulate strategies for transformation, redistribution, and innovation, while balancing sustainable demands with ‘good’ local lives and communities.
Crucially, EdgeNet’s ambitions reach beyond representing peripheral regions and diverse geographies. We also shape space for experimental methodologies and heterodox theoretical perspectives that might themselves be on the edge of Regional Studies – or take Regional Studies to the cutting edge of contemporary cross-disciplinary debates on spatial differences and divisions in the global economy. From ethnographic methods and complex adaptive assemblages (Willett), to spatial justice (Goodwin-Hawkins) and feminist economic geography (Eriksson), we bring our own creative edge to Regional Studies. Through inviting new and emerging perspectives that pluralise the subjects, forms, and geographies of peripherality, EdgeNet will enhance Regional Studies’ engagement with peripheral places and regions and their futures.