Conference details

The past plays a crucial role in understanding, developing and implementing regional economic development policies. History reveals path dependencies in regions’ economies and informs about the successes and failures of policy instruments. As part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Regional Studies Association, the RSA Research Network on Regional Economic and Policy History (ReHi) has been funded for the period 2017-2019. The main objective of the network is to explore what a historic perspective may contribute to regional studies as well as current regional policy-making and how approaches and methodologies used by historians can be better integrated in the regional studies.

The stock taking

The new network starts with a ‘stock-take’ of the connections that already exist between history and regional studies. Many geographers, political scientists and economists include historical perspectives in their work. This can include an occasional sketch of the historical context of economic and/or political processes. Additionally, concepts such as ‘learning region’ or ‘regional resilience’ are closely related to historical studies and analyse long- or medium term processes which have a historical dimension. Simultaneously, the historical sciences have a long tradition of studying regional economic development and a vast body of work exists. Agglomerated economies are an important subject in the historiography about the economic growth. Besides, historians make use of concepts borrowed from economic geography. For example business historians have operationalised concepts such as ‘industrial districts’ and ‘clusters’ in order to explain the dynamics of regional economies. Furthermore, planning and economic policies also include themes for historical. These and other dimensions of the social sciences provide a point of contact between historians and scholars with a regional studies background.

Format of the workshop

The event is free but the places available are limited.

The start meeting should create a basic level of interdisciplinary connections on which can be built during the subsequent workshops. On the afternoon of Tuesday 25 April we will start with a discussion on key notes delivered by, amongst others, our local host John Tomaney, UCL; Natasha Vall, Teesside University on regions and historical reasoning; as well as Joan R. Rosés, LSE who will speak about long-term economic development in regions. In the morning and early-afternoon of 26 April 2017 we will continue with 6 to 8 individual papers from researchers in several stages of their career. We hope to schedule at least one or more PhD-students which we can offer travel bursaries. We especially (but not exclusively) invite:

Economic geographers, human geographers, political scientists economists and sociologists who include historical perspectives in their work
Economic historians, political historians, urban historians working on urban and regional development and researchers who focus on territorial policy history

We are looking for examples of research approaches and case-studies that helps us to get insight in the ontological and methodological similarities and differences between historical and regional studies. Many historians tend to work inductively, whereas regional studies are mostly theory driven. Nevertheless, there are numerous similarities between research approaches which will be presented and debated in the start meeting of the RSA research Network on Regional Economic and Policy History.