2026 RSA Annual Conference Submitted Closed Sessions

Session Organiser(s):
Franziska Sohns, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Session Description:

This session is the Annual FinGeo–RSA Lecture, celebrating the ongoing collaboration between the Global Network on Financial Geography (FinGeo) and the Regional Studies Association (RSA), including their co-sponsorship of the journal Finance and Space. The lecture aims to bring together scholars interested in the financial, technological, and spatial dimensions of contemporary economic transformation.

The invited speaker is Professor Rick Carew, Adjunct Professor of Finance & Economics at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. His lecture will focus on US–China technology competition and its implications for innovation clusters, venture capital, and the geography of Artificial Intelligence. Drawing on his academic work, policy engagement, and extensive professional experience as a former senior editor and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and China, Professor Carew will examine how state policy, Big Tech firms, and financial systems have shaped the rapid concentration of AI innovation in the United States and China.

The lecture will explore the role of venture capital and corporate balance sheets in fostering, scaling, or absorbing innovation, as well as the spatial dynamics of data centres, startup ecosystems, and technology clusters. It will also reflect on what these developments imply for other regions, particularly Europe, and what conditions might enable new challengers to emerge in the global AI landscape.

Speaker:
Professor Rick Carew, Adjunct Professor of Finance & Economics, Fordham University (USA)

Session Organiser(s):
Dariusz Wojcik, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Session Description:

This session would have the format of a fireside chat between Dariusz Wojcik and Carl Mossfeldt, followed by a Q&A with the audience. The central question and empirical puzzle addressed by the chat is why cities so often ‘stumble’ while running urban transformation projects, and the deeper causes of this ‘stumbling’ related to the sticky power of global financial networks.

Over a decade, Carl Mossfeldt, an independent urban governance advisor, held strategic roles across three major transformation initiatives in Gothenburg: the Bergsjön housing estate renewal, the RiverCity waterfront development, and the municipal Climate Transition Office. Each was adequately resourced, backed by political commitment, and staffed by competent professionals. Each ’stumbled’ in ways that surprised those involved: the city reached toward transformation, encountered what it would actually require, retreated into what existing arrangements could accommodate. In addition, he draws on insights from long-term collaboration with Yale School of Architecture on building an Urban Atlas for Gothenburg, which shows material traces of production accumulated over four centuries, canals, railways, housing estates, refineries. Dariusz Wójcik, Professor of Financial Geography at the National University of Singapore, would draw on examples from Atlas of Finance, and his collaborative work on global financial networks.

Together we will examine how the material and financial geography have diverged: cities have inherit infrastructure requiring collective coordination, but the trust relationships that once made coordination possible now run through financial centres whose logic doesn’t align with territorial outcomes. The necessary binding that trust presupposes has dissolved – but in ways that are not necessarily apparent. This creates room for an innovation theatre to fill the void, contributing to the underlying legitimacy problem. We will also discuss possibilities for restoring a better alignment and binding between the logic of the global financial network and local outcomes, through local finance, regulation, and trust-enhancing financial instruments and institutions.

Session Organiser(s):
Ilaria Mariotti, Politecnico di Milano,Italy
Carles Méndez-Ortega, Open University of Catalonia, Spain
Oliver Rafaj, University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia
Dimitrios Manoukas, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Federica Maria Rossi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Chiara Tagliaro, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Session Description:

This Session examines how public policies, grants, and support mechanisms across various governance levels—European, national, regional, and local—have influenced innovation and entrepreneurship in rural areas through collaborative spaces (CS). The literature has emphasized the importance of CS as a platform for developing activities that foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the local community. Key themes include the promotion of digital inclusion, the green transition, and building community resilience through brain circulation and talent retention in rural areas.

The session will address the following questions:

• How is innovation and entrepreneurship promoted in rural areas?
• What are the direct, indirect, and ‘ancillary’ policy tools promoting innovation and entrepreneurship applied in rural settings?
• What role do collaborative spaces play in the economic and social transformation of rural areas?
• How do public policies and support mechanisms influence the sustainability, resilience, and long-term success of rural areas?

By exploring these dynamics across multiple European countries, the Session aims to assess the effectiveness of policy-driven interventions in revitalising rural areas through CS, fostering economic resilience and sustainability, and enhancing social regeneration. Cases will be shown from Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Slovakia.

The cases will support the argument that CS serve as critical hubs for social and economic revitalization in rural areas, facilitating collaboration, skill-sharing, and community engagement. This policy Session will contribute to gathering systematic evidence on their role in mitigating socioeconomic challenges, enhancing digital access, and supporting sustainable development from the perspectives of the main CS stakeholders, namely: end-users (i.e., CS members), coworking managers, associations, and policy-makers.

Presentations:
1. End-users. Oliver Rafaj and Carles Méndez-Ortega
2. Coworking managers. Chiara Tagliaro and Ilaria Mariotti
3. Coworking associations. Dimitrios Manoukas and Federica Rossi
4. Policy-makers. Policies and initiatives on the European level. Simone Sasso and Ilaria Mariotti

Session Organiser(s):
Lukas Haefner, University of Kassel, Germany
Simin Yan, Chongqing University, China
Alois Humer, TU Wien, Austria

Session Description:

Bridging economic, social, and environmental divides across territories is essential to achieving inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11, UN, 2025). Urban–rural linkages represent the flows of people, resources, goods and services between urban centres and their surrounding rural areas. Governing these linkages amid territorial fragmentation in city-regions and cross-border settings has resulted in complex, multi-level governance arrangements. These arrangements, however, are often challenged by overlapping jurisdictions, misaligned policies, and uneven fiscal and administrative capacities. This special session therefore explores strategies to improve the governance of urban–rural linkages and address the challenges of territorial fragmentation.

Core questions include:
· What challenges arise from administrative and socio-economic fragmentation for the governance of urban–rural linkages?
· Which strategies and policy frameworks strengthen the governance of urban–rural linkages across fragmented territories?

The session brings together international, interdisciplinary contributions that examine urban–rural linkages through key governance arenas in which fragmentation becomes particularly visible: land take and settlement development, mobility and infrastructure, services of general interest, and socio-ecological conflicts. Across these arenas, papers analyse how governance strategies evolve under territorial fragmentation and shifting technological, political, and economic conditions.

Contributions address:
· Urban–rural linkages under territorial fragmentation in city-regions and cross-border settings (flows of people, goods, and services).
· Policy coordination and capacity gaps across jurisdictions, including misaligned sectoral policies and uneven fiscal/administrative resources.
· Land take and settlement development trade-offs at the intersection of housing, infrastructure, ecology and environmental protection.
· Comparative and network-based learning for governance innovation, identifying transferable approaches to city-regional governance.

This special session forms part of the RSA Research Network on Bridging Governance Gaps in City-Regions: Addressing Land Take and City-Region Building Through Comparative Research and offers an opportunity to engage with its three-year research agenda on institutional change and governance of urban–rural linkages in city-regions and cross-border settings. Contributions to this session may form part of the network’s envisaged special issue in the RSA journal ‘Territory, Politics and Governance’ during 2026-2027.

List of speakers: We propose organising the session as a double session structured into two thematic blocks: (1) challenges arising from territorial fragmentation for the governance of urban–rural linkages; and (2) strategies and institutional innovations that strengthen coordination and integration across fragmented territories.

Session 1
1. Anna Growe (University of Kassel), Alois Humer (TU Wien), Chen Chen (Tongji University), Simin Yan (presenter; Chongqing University), Eva Purkarthofer (Aalto University), Lukas Häfner (University of Kassel) — Bridging Governance Gaps in City-Regions: Promoting Discourse and Comparative Research on Land Take and City-Region Building through an International Interdisciplinary Research Network
2. Florian Albrecht (presenter; University of Kassel) and Anna Growe (University of Kassel) — Navigating Agglomeration Pressures and Emerging Inequalities in Interlinked Metropolitan Regions: Governance Responses in Rhine-Main and Rhine-Neckar
3. Jason Bell (University of the Witwatersrand and University of Johannesburg) — Left Behind: An Exploration of Uneven Urban-Industrial Development in Periphery Townships in the Gauteng City-Region
4. Eliška Vejchodská (Charles University) — Biodiversity, Land and Housing under Competing Public Interests: Rural Development in Protected Areas of Czechia
5. Zunjie Zhang (Harvard Graduate School of Design) — Ecological Stitching: Deep Bay between Urban and Rural

Session 2
6. Alois Humer (TU Wien) — The governance of services of general interest from an urban-rural systemic perspective: theoretical concepts and planning strategies
7. Wander Demuynck (presenter; KU Leuven), Ben Derudder (KU Leuven), Evert Meijers (Utrecht University) — In-between politics: Interplaces as discursive brokers in fragmented metropolitan transport governance
8. Theresia Morandell (EURAC Research) — Divergent city-regional perspectives? Using NLP to map how core cities and surrounding municipalities frame urban–rural linkages in local planning
9. Lukas Häfner (presenter; University of Kassel) and Anna Growe (University of Kassel) — Working Across Borders: Local authorities and Inter-Municipal Settlement Development in Germany

Session Organiser(s):
Cristian Matti, EU Joint Research Centre
Karel Haegeman, EU Joint Research Centre

Session Description:

As the European Union faces unprecedented challenges in competitiveness, resilience, and climate adaptation, the role of regions has never been more critical. Recent high-level reports (e.g., Draghi, 2024) highlight that the EU’s long-term competitiveness is at risk unless these challenges are translated into systemic solutions. This special session directly addresses the conference theme, “Regions as Arenas in a Changing World,” by exploring how territories can actively shape their future through transformative innovation policies.

While the theory of socio-technical transitions is well established, a significant gap remains between high-level policy goals and practical implementation. This session brings together leading scholars and policy experts to bridge that gap. We argue that Sustainable Regional Competitiveness is no longer just about economic growth, but about a region’s capacity to identify “opportunity spaces” – possible futures enabled by local conditions – and to mobilise “innovation portfolios” to realise them.

The session follows a logical narrative of implementation:

• Matti, Cristian & Haegeman, K. Joint Research Centre. Navigating transition pathways through innovation portfolios. The papers explore the challenge of integrating industrial and regional transition pathways to identify opportunity spaces and build adaptive capacities.
• Markus Grillitsch, Lund University. From opportunity spaces to transformative policies: Rationales, conceptualisation, and practice of innovation portfolios. The paper explores the “innovation portfolio” as a concrete tool for public sector actors to coordinate actions and shape opportunity spaces.
• Ainhoa Arrona, Edurne Magro, James R. Wilson, Orkestra, Basque Institute of Competitiveness. Governing the implementation of place-based industrial transitions. The paper examines the governance arrangements necessary to manage these complex policy mixes and innovation portfolios, emphasising the need for a “discovery process” involving diverse actors.
• Elvira Uyarra and Matt Ziembla, Manchester University. Place-Based Missions and Regional Readiness: Reimagining the Role of Universities in Innovation Ecosystems. The paper reassesses the role of anchor institutions, specifically universities, in building the “regional readiness” required for these transformations.

Together, these contributions offer a comprehensive toolkit for policymakers and scholars to understand not only what transitions are needed, but also how to govern and implement them in diverse regional arenas.

Session Organiser(s):
Dariusz Wojcik, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Session Description:

One of the very first books on financial geography ever published, entitled Financial Geography: A Banker’s View was published in 1998 by School of Economics and Commercial Law at Gothenburg University, and written by Risto Laulajainen (1937-2015), a professor at that school. In this panel session, we want to commemorate the contributions of this and other financial geographical works by Risto Laulajainen with a broader goal of revisiting the roots of financial geography in the 1990s, and reflecting on their relevance for research in the 2020s. How did we encounter Risto’s works and ideas? What was the context of these encounters? How did they influence our own research in relation to other foundational works on the relationships between finance and space? How and why should his book and works be read now? Which of his arguments hold today? How can his approach be revisited constructively for the next decades? These and other questions will be addressed by a diverse group of scholars, who were impacted by Risto’s work or even knew him personally. The session will consist of short interventions from the panelists, followed by an open discussion. Our intention is to publish the main takeaways from the panel as a commentary in the journal Finance & Space.

List of speakers:
Franziska Sohns, ARU Cambridge, UK (chair)
Fabio Contel, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Albina Gibadulina, Brown University, USA
Michael Grote, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Germany
John Morris, University of Nottingham, UK
Fenghua Pan, Beijing Normal University, China
Patrik Ström, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
Dariusz Wojcik, National University of Singapore

Session Organiser(s):
Kai-Ti Wu, European Citizen Science Association, Germany
Franziska Stressmann, European Citizen Science Association, Germany
Carolina Doran, European Citizen Science Association, Germany
Alberto Anticoli, European Citizen Science Association, Germany

Session Description:

#citizenscience #ecsa #riecsconcept #esfri

This closed session is organised as a curated, discussion-based workshop bringing together invited scholars, practitioners, and policy-oriented researchers with expertise in regional governance, participatory research, and data-driven policymaking. The session is designed to explore user needs, expectations, and challenges related to the governance, sustainability, and policy integration of participatory research infrastructures, including citizen science.

Rather than a paper-presentation format, the session adopts a scenario-based and narrative approach to elicit user perspectives across different territorial and institutional contexts. Participants will collectively reflect on how regions function as key arenas where participatory knowledge production, digital infrastructures, and public policy intersect, and where issues of trust, coordination, and long-term sustainability become particularly salient.

The session aims to generate qualitative insights into how different stakeholder groups experience and navigate participatory research infrastructures, and how governance and policy frameworks shape their effectiveness across local, regional, national, and European levels.

Workshop Facilitator/Speaker: Kai-Ti Wu

Key Themes and Guiding Questions
The session will focus on eliciting user perspectives around the following themes:
User needs and expectations regarding the governance of participatory research infrastructures operating across multiple territorial levels.
Trust, legitimacy, and accountability in citizen-generated data and participatory knowledge systems.
Sustainability challenges beyond project-based funding, including institutional support and policy alignment at regional and national levels.
Collaboration and coordination between researchers, citizens, public authorities, and intermediary organisations.
Policy interfaces, examining how participatory research outputs are used, recognised, or constrained within regional policymaking processes.
Discussion will emphasise cross-disciplinary and cross-regional comparison, highlighting how territorial diversity shapes user experiences and governance needs.

Format
The session will be organised as a structured, facilitated discussion rather than a paper session. Short framing inputs will introduce the discussion themes, followed by interactive, scenario-based dialogue among participants. The format prioritises in-depth exchange and collective reflection.

Target Audience
This session is relevant to scholars of regional governance and development, political and economic geographers, policy researchers, practitioners involved in participatory research and citizen science, research infrastructure designers, and policymakers or funding bodies interested in participatory knowledge production and regional policy innovation.

Session Organiser(s):
Muzamil Farooq, University of Stavanger, Norway
Huiwen Gong, University of Stavanger, Norway
Suyash Jolly, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Tim Rottleb, Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany

Session Description:

Over the past decade, economic geography and regional studies have experienced a growing ideational turn, alongside a broader futures turn in human geography. Increasing attention has been paid to how various forms of ideas, such as imaginaries, expectations, narratives and visions shape economic action and spatial development, as well as to how anticipations of the future, rather than inherited structures alone, actively inform present-day strategies, policies, and investments. Together, these shifts have foregrounded the temporal, symbolic, and performative dimensions of regional development.

This closed session brings together four panellists to discuss and debate the practices and policy implications of regional futures/futuring thinking for urban and regional policy making. The central question for this session is: how does the emerging research on regional futuring benefit policy making, and why and how does it matter?

This closed session is a companion to the open session SS15. Regional Futuring and Uneven Geographies of Futures: Theories, Methods, and Practices

Session Organiser(s):
João Prates Romero, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, Brazil

Session Description:

There has been growing evidence on the importance of related diversification and of increasing economic complexity for regional development. Yet, there is still a lot to be learned about how to increase social and environmental sustainable development across regions. On the one hand, while there is evidence of related diversification in scientific areas, technology classes and economic activities, there are only a few papers that investigate the interplay between these spheres. Moreover, there is still debate on what is the best specification to calculate such indexes, in terms of method, regional and sectoral aggregation level, type of data used, and so on. On the other hand, although evidence suggests a negative relationship between economic complexity and CO2 emission intensity, this relationship might vary between regions with distinct characteristics, while the gross effect on emissions might still be positive.

This session brings together leading scholars on economic complexity indicators from Brazil to contribute to the knowledge on these issues. The first paper presents the description of the data made available in DataViva, which is a data visualization platform that seeks to make it easier for the general public to access disaggregated employment and export data for brazilian regions (at different regional levels) as well as relatedness and economic complexity indexes. Combining patent and employment data, the first paper contributes to the knowledge of the interplay between technological related diversification and industrial related diversification in the process of regional economic growth. The third paper examines the relationship between economic resilience, economic complexity, and environmental degradation in Brazilian immediate regions.

Finally, the session aims also to present the DataViva Platform, showing how to access the databases and visualizations available in the platform as well as presenting the new features introduced in the latest updates of the platform.

Papers and Speakers:

DataViva 2023: Regional Economic Complexity and Activity Space from Employment Data, Elton Freitas – Universidade Federal de Sergipe (USF), Brazil
João Romero (Cedeplar-UFMG), Gustavo Britto (Cedeplar-UFMG), Ramon Torres (Cedeplar-UFMG), Alexandre Stein (Cedeplar-UFMG), Arthur Queiroz (Cedeplar-UFMG)

The article provides methodological details on the calculation of regional economic complexity indicators introduced in the DataViva platform’s new version launched in 2023. The new version of the platform introduces four new indicators, constructed by adapting the original economic complexity methodology, originally based on export data, to employment and occupation data available in RAIS. This new methodology addresses the issues associated with using export data at the regional level and allows for a flexible definition of regions based on the aggregation of municipal data. These indicators include: (i) the regional economic complexity indicator (ECI-R); (ii) the activity complexity indicator (ACI-R); (iii) the activity density indicator (D); and (iv) the regional productive coherence indicator (PC-R). In addition to these new indicators, the article also presents the methodology for constructing the Activity Space.

Industry Relatedness and Regional Technological Diversification: Evidence from Brazil, João Romero – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
Danielle de Carvalho (Cedeplar-UFMG)

The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence of industrial relatedness density on technological diversification in Brazil’s intermediate regions. MQO, Probit, and Logit models were estimated for 133 intermediate regions and 119 technological classes between 2006 and 2021. The results indicate that the probability of technological diversification increases when technologies are related to the local industrial portfolio. Additionally, technological relatedness does not affect diversification in regions with low per capita income; in these areas, only industrial relatedness is positively associated with entry. Industrial relatedness is more relevant for technological diversification when considering patents from private applicants compared to university applicants.

Linking Economic Resilience, Complexity, and Sustainable Development: Regional Evidence from Brazil, Gustavo Britto – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
Jordana Silva (Cedeplar-UFMG); Diogo Ferraz (UFOP); Igor Tupy (IPEA)

The paper examines the relationship between economic resilience, economic complexity, and environmental degradation for Brazilian immediate regions. Considering the economic recession from  2014 to 2016 and the subsequent recovery from 2017 to 2019, we employ Resistance and Recovery indices based on formal employment data, complemented by regional measures of Economic Complexity and CO₂ emissions. Spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regressions models are estimated to account for interdependence and spillover effects among regions. The results reveal that increases in economic complexity are associated with lower resilience and higher CO₂ emissions, particularly in contexts of weak infrastructure and industrial vulnerability. Moreover, the non-linear effects of economic complexity on CO₂ emissions provide evidence consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Our findings contribute to debates on resilience and sustainable development, offering implications for policies that integrate productive diversification, innovation, and efforts towards green transitions.

The DataViva Platform, Gustavo Britto (Cedeplar-UFMG – Presenter), Elton Freitas (USF – Presenter), João Romero (Cedeplar-UFMG – Presenter)