The Centre for European Studies of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania will organise between 13 – 15 May 2020 an intensive program for PhD and postdoctoral students on INTRODUCTIVE METHODS AND APPROACHES IN REGIONAL SCIENCE.

The event, supported by the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), will focus on sharing new methodological approaches in regional science methodology and on developing particular abilities and competences required for PhD and postdoctoral students.

The program will benefit from the expertise of distinguished lecturers in regional science:

• Dimitris BALLAS, University of Groningen
• Peter NIJKAMP, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University / Adam Mickiewicz University
• Karima KOURTIT, Jheronimus Academy of Data Science
• Andrea CARAGLIU, Politecnico di Milano
• Tomaz Ponce Dentinho, University of the Azores, Portugal
• Jacques POOT, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The workshops are designed for PhD and postdoctoral students from Eastern Europe from fields related to regional science.

The Intensive program INTRODUCTIVE METHODS AND APPROACHES IN REGIONAL SCIENCE has no participation fee.

The organisers will cover for: Lunch and coffee break throughout the event; Accommodation for four nights in double rooms; Registration for EURINT 2020 Conference and participation to gala dinner.

Applications must be submitted by e-mail until March 31, 2020 and include a short CV and a two-page summary of a research project.

For complete details regarding the eligibility and application process please consult the following website: www.cse.uaic.ro/en/nurturing.htm .

CONTACT PERSON: Local Organising Committee, Bogdan IBANESCU, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I would like to encourage you to submit your research and to spread the word about the 2 special sessions organised by the OECD Trento Centre jointly with partners.

1. S50. The spatial dimension of productivity for regional growth

Following the success of the last year special sessions on spatial productivity, the Spatial Productivity Lab at the OECD Trento Centre has partnered with the UK-based Productivity Insights Network to organise this year edition titled “The Spatial Dimension of Productivity for Regional Growth”. We are accepting submissions that tackle the issue of productivity from a regional/subnational perspective in a variety of contexts and under a range of angles. Please consider submitting your research and encourage others to do so!

1. S49. Competitiveness and sustainable growth across regional typologies

This special session seeks to focus on the issues of competitiveness and sustainable economic growth within certain types of regions. Research that focuses on the mountainous regions, thin economies, island economies, marginalised rural areas, etc. would fit well. To give a few examples outside of the traditional urban-rural delineation, in Italy, the areas of interest can be inner areas and the Italian South; in the US, counties within the ARC fall within this topic.

Please submit your research and encourage others to do so.

As the OECD Trento Centre is launching a new stream of work on sustainable economic mountain development, if any people working on this or closely related topics come to mind, please share the names with us, so we can draw from their expertise and to form a network of interested researchers.

Thank you and hope to see every one of you in Bolzano in August.

With kind regards,

Alexandra Tsvetkova | Economist/Policy Analyst
Trento Centre for Local Development || Spatial Productivity Lab

Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities

Call for Papers

Romanian Journal of Regional Science (rjrs.ase.ro)  invites contributions for the special issue entitled ”Uncovering territorial inequalities and spatial justice in the EU”, under the auspices of the Horizon 2020 project IMAJINE – Integrative Mechanisms for Addressing Spatial Justice  and Territorial Inequalities in Europe, with Ana Vinuela, University of Oviedo, Spain and Maria Plotnikova, Aberystwyth University, UK as Guest Editors.

The special issue is planned to be launched by mid-June, 2020. Submission deadline: April 12 at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The problem of territorial inequality is especially important for the EU. The European project has been a long-running process of the coming together of the European states into a single territorial unit. Territorial inequalities have long persisted in the EU. Following a period of convergence in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2008 financial crisis had widened regional economic disparities in Europe. Territorial inequalities have been targets of policy intervention via regional policy and more recently, Cohesion policy with the objective to  promote more balanced and more sustainable territorial development.

Policy intervention is deemed necessary because territorial inequalities in economic performance may over-time lead to divergence in levels and trajectories of development among regions, preventing lagging regions from reaching their potential and necessitating fiscal transfers from richer ones. Territorial inequalities engender migration flows from poorer to richer regions contributing to cumulative causation behind the persistence of inequalities. Territorial inequalities in unemployment and health bring about clusters of multi-dimensional deprivation, increasing reliance on welfare disbursements and public provision of services.  Moreover perception of territorial inequalities in ‘lagging’ or ‘left-behind’ regions may foster what has been termed as the “geography of discontent” expressed in grass-roots movements, support for extreme political parties and anti-establishment voting behaviour (e.g. Brexit vote outcome in the UK). 

The perspective of spatial justice offers a new angle for analysing and ultimately tackling territorial inequality.  Inequalities may be understood as differences in opportunities available for individuals expressed through access to (e.g. education, jobs, healthcare, services, and, ultimately social mobility) that differ across space and where spacial differences in access interact with its socio-economic determinants such as class, gender, age, ethnicity and others.

Understanding territorial inequalities therefore requires greater attention to regional and local socio-economic contexts. Doing so brings to light the interrelationship between economic inequality and other location-specific factors such as differential capacity of regions and localities to sustain economic activity, absorb economic shocks and respond to policy intervention, including Cohesion policies.

We invite papers addressing the issues of territorial inequalities and conceptualization of spatial justice from any disciplinary area.

This event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

RSAI NURTURING YOUNG SCIENTIFIC TALENTS WORKSHOP

New Methods in Regional Science:

Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics

• Coordinators of the project:
  • Abdellatif Khattabi (AMSR) et
  • Karim El Aynaoui (UM6P)

• Scientific Committee:
  • Andrea Caragliu
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Lakshmi Sivaramakrishnan
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Saad Badaoui
  • Said Lahssini
  • Sumona Banerjee
  • Tomaz Dentinho

• Organizing Committee:
  • Erdogan H. Ekiz
  • Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Said Lahssini
• Duration:  2 days: May 31 – June 1, 2020
• Venue/Location: UM6P, Benguerir, Morocco (close to Marrakech)
• Expected participants: 20-25 young scientists

The volume of available data for research and policy has more than doubled in the past decade and shows an exponential growth. This new situation is also creating unexpected opportunities for regional science research. In order to seize such opportunities and examine the changing complexity of data structures and volumes, traditional methods in regional science need to be re-thought and re-designed. Data science brings innovative methods, information processes, complex algorithms and new digital systems, with the aim to harvest and extract knowledge from huge and big data using inter alia machine-learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Such techniques will be more than ever needed in modern regional science research. A presentation of such usual approaches will be given in a dedicated workshop in relation to the RSAI World Conference in Marrakech (Morocco).

This workshop will give an overview of methods, models and computational architectures related to the above topics. The workshop will involve lectures and practical sessions related to theory, tools and practices, case studies and student’s presentations. It will familiarize participants with new machine learning techniques, supervised and unsupervised learning, segmentation methods and deep learning. Participants will also gain experience in organizing data using traditional methods as well as more modern statistical and econometric approaches.

This two days’ workshop on “New Methods in Regional Science: Data science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics”, meant for young scientists in Morocco and elsewhere in Africa and the whole world.  It will be organized by the Moroccan Regional Science Association (AMSR) and the University Mohamed 6 Polytechnic (UM6P), in close association with the RSAI World Congress that will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from June 2 – 5, 2020.

The workshop is offered to Master Students, PhD Candidates and early career researchers, with a view to enhancing their knowledge, their networking abilities, cooperation and start-up of their professional career. The meeting venue creates appropriate conditions, place and space to provide young scientists with a substantive training for their efficient and successful scientific career development, for the presentation of their new work, and for receiving feedback from inspiring senior scholars and from their peers.

The workshop’s organization cooperates with higher education institutions from Morocco and other countries. The workshop will create a multidisciplinary and multinational scientific environment and promises valuable scientific results in the form of new common research project proposals, publication outputs, support of young researchers, and development of scientific cooperation. Candidates have to apply for participation in this workshop.

The selection of participants for the workshop will be based on the quality of their applications.  Applications for the workshop should include an outline of the research interest and motivation of Master or PhD students; brief description of the presentation that will be delivered; institutional affiliation and current position; reference from the home institution. The plan is to nurture new talent of about 5 Master Students, 10 PhD candidates and 5 early career researchers.

POTENTIAL KEY SPEAKERS (TENTATIVE)

• Theory and practice
  • Jean-Claude Thill
  • Michael Goodchild (tbc)
  • Carlo de Weijer (tbc)
  • John Osth (tbc)
  • Laurie Schintler
  • Parvathy Krishnan
• Case studies:
  • Eduardo Haddad
  • Peter Nijkamp
  • Karima Kourtit
  • Thomaz Dentinho
  • Said Lahssini and Hicham Mharzi Alaoui
  • Saad Badaoui

More information at: http://amsr.ma/RSAI_NT/