2020 RSA Annual Conference Plenary Speakers

Lilijana Madjar is the Directress of the Regional Development Agency of Ljubljana Urban Region (RRA LUR). She has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in management from the University of Ljubljana. Since 2015 she is the chairwoman of the Development Council of the Western Slovenia Cohesion Region – a central body representing the Western Slovenia Cohesion Region’s interests through dialogue with governmental institutions. As the vice-chairwoman of the Regional Development Agencies Association (RRA GIZ), Lilijana is coordinating the promotion of regional development. Furthermore, she is the deputy president of the Slovenian Innovation Hub Council.

Mrs. Madjar is very active as a speaker at professional conferences in various fields. In the past several years she has participated at a number Conferences in Europe, where she has given talks on regional governance related topics, the city and the region’s achievements and presented main projects of the Agency, which focused on sustainable mobility, circular economy, preserving nature and protecting the environment, culture and creative industries, etc.

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.

Daniela Luminita Constantin is Professor of Regional Economics and Policy at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies and Director of the Research Centre for Macroeconomic and Regional Forecasting of the same university. She is the President of the Romanian Regional Science Association, a member of the European Organising Committee of the European Regional Science Association and Councilor-at-Large of the Council of Regional Science Association International. She carried out several research stages abroad as Fulbright Senior Scholar (two grants – first, at the University of Illionis at Urbana-Champaign, and second, at George Mason University, Arlington, VA), DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service – five stages at the universities of Karlsruhe, Freiburg and Heidelberg), JSPS (Japan Society for Promotion of Science – University of Takamatsu), and Phare-Tempus (EU) scholar (University of Reading, UK and Free University of Amsterdam), among others. She has authored or co-authored a large number of books and articles published in Romania and abroad and has co-ordinated many national and international research projects (e.g. Horizon 2020, FP7, ESPON, CERGE-GDN, etc.). She has been the recipient of important awards and honours (e.g. the Researcher of the Year 2018 of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Doctor Honoris Causa of the “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati, Romania, the Annual Prize of the Jerry Johnson Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, US, and so on). Her main scientific interest concentrates on regional policy analysis, regional growth, EU structural assistance, regional and city resilience, regional clusters, territorial justice, etc.

Laura de Dominicis, PhD. is an economic analyst at the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission, where she is responsible for carrying out quantitative analyses on various aspects linked to the economic development of EU regions and cities. Previously, she has worked as an economic analyst in the European Commission at the Directorate General for Employment and Social Affair and at the Joint Research Centre in Seville, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Spatial Economics of the VU University Amsterdam. She has published in academic journals, mainly within the field of regional growth. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Rome of Tor Vergata.

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.

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”.

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.

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”.

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).

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.

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.