2025 RSA Annual Conference Plenary Sessions and Speakers

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Prof. Elisa Ferreira was the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms from 2019-2024. Before that, she was Vice Governor of the Bank of Portugal. During her tenure, she was Portugal’s representative on the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Elisa was previously a Member of the European Parliament, coordinating for the Group of Socialists and Democrats in the EP’s Economic and Monetary (ECON) Committee and was rapporteur, co-rapporteur or shadow rapporteur of many key legislative files, including the ‘six-pack’ and ‘two-pack’, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and the regulation creating the Single Resolution Mechanism. In Portugal, Elisa was a Member of the Portuguese National Parliament and Portugal’s Minister for Planning following her term as Portugal’s Minister for the Environment. She has also been Executive Vice President of the Porto Industrial Association, Vice President of Portugal’s Northern Region Coordination Commission and member of the Board of Portugal’s Statistics Authority. She has a degree in economics from the University of Porto, and a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Reading in the UK. She is a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (on leave of absence).

Pedro Conceição has been the Director of the Human Development Report Office and the lead author of the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since January 2019. Prior to this, Conceição served as the Director of strategic policy at the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (from October 2014) and as the Chief Economist and the head of the Strategic Advisory Unit at the Regional Bureau for Africa (from December 2009). Before that, he was the Director of the Office of Development Studies (ODS) from March 2007 to November 2009 and the Deputy Director of ODS from October 2001 to February 2007. His work on financing for development and on global public goods was published by Oxford University Press in books he co-edited (‘The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges’, 2006; ‘Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization’, 2003). He has published on inequality, the economics of innovation and technological change, and development in, among other journals, the African Development Review, Review of Development Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, Ecological Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Food Policy, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

Michaela Trippl is a Full Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Vienna, Austria. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and Fellow of the Regional Studies Association (FeRSA) in 2021. Michaela’s research primarily centres on the geography of innovation and sustainability transitions, challenge-oriented innovation systems, green path development, and place-based transformative innovation and industrial policies. She has published numerous articles in major journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A and Regional Studies.

Mário Vale has a Degree in Geography, a Master’s degree in Human Geography and Local and Regional Planning and a PhD Degree in Human Geography from the University of Lisbon. He holds a position as Full Professor at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Lisbon. He was Visiting Research Fellow at CURDS (Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies), at the University of Newcastle) in 2006 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Department of Geography at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) in 2013. Currently, he is Director of the Centre for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, and a member of ZOE research cluster in CEG.
He has been working on urban and regional economic change, especially in the European periphery, combining institutional, evolutionary and political economy perspectives in economic geography. His research has been supported by several research projects of national and international (FP4, 5 and 6, Gremi-T, Integrated Actions and FCT).

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John Bachtler is a Professor in the European Policies Research Centre based at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and Delft University of Technology. His research principally involves comparative studies of regional and local development policies in Europe, including the design, implementation and evaluation of EU Cohesion Policy and the national regional policies of 30 European countries. He has been an expert adviser to numerous government departments in Europe, the European Parliament, European Commission, Committee of the Regions, European Court of Auditors, over 15 EU Council Presidencies, and the OECD. He is an Academician of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Regional Studies Association, and Board Member of RSA Europe.

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Louise Kempton is Professor of Urban and Regional Policy in the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University, UK.  She has over 30 years’ experience as a researcher, policy maker and practitioner in local, regional and international economic development. Her current research is focused on the evolving understanding of the role of universities as ‘anchor’ institutions in local/regional economic growth and innovation, and the effects of place in shaping this role. She is also interested in the process of building local collaborative leadership to develop innovative solutions to meeting local policy challenges and opportunities.  Louise has previously served as Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in Newcastle University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2019-2023).  She is currently the CURDS Director-designate, taking over the role in February 2025.

Joana Resende is the Vice-Rector of University of Porto for Strategic Planning, Knowledge Valorization and Entrepreneurship. She is also an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Management of U.Porto. She is the President of U.Porto Science and Technology Park (UPTEC) and the local coordinator of the European Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH) at University of Porto. She is also a member of the General Council of INESC-TEC (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science). From 2017-2020, she was a member of the Board of Directors of Cef-up (Center for Economics and Finance at University of Porto).
She holds a PhD in Economics and Management Science from Université Catholique de Louvain (joint degree with U.Porto). Her main research areas are industrial organization and digital economics. She is particularly interested in investigating business models and competitive dynamics allowed by new generation digital technologies allowing firms to engage in price and product personalization strategies. She has taken part in multiple national and international scientific projects. At the present moment, she is the local Coordinator (at U.Porto) of the European Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH) and the local coordinator of the EUGLOHRIA project (funded by H2020 – Swafs). She is also the Principal Investigator of the project New Business Models in the Digital Age: Theory and Applications (funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation).
Her research has been published in leading international economic journals, including The Rand Journal of Economics, Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Economic Theory, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Information, Economics & Policy, Journal of Public Economic Theory. Over time, she has acted as consultant for both private and public entities, in the areas of competition policy, regulation and energy markets