RSA Early Career Grant Scheme
We are very pleased to announce the new Early Career Grant holders for the 2022 round. Congratulations to Paula Prenzel and Emma Ormerod. Read below to find out more about them and their projects.
Paula Prenzel is Assistant Professor of Regional Development at the University of Greifswald, Germany. She studied economics and regional studies in Maastricht and Groningen and holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the London School of Economics. Her research engages with consequences of demographic change, diversity and migration for local economic development, focusing on how changes in population size and composition may shape regional economic and innovative processes.
“Receiving the RSA Early Career Grant is a great opportunity to strengthen my research and focus on a topic that I am very excited about. There is still much to learn about the consequences of COVID-19 on migration and the grant gives me the chance to explore this while also developing a new and interdisciplinary aspect of my research. I am honoured and very grateful that this project will be supported by the RSA.”
Staying in or Moving out? – Quality of Life, Interregional Migration Decisions and Covid-19
Although COVID-19 is a global health emergency, it is experienced in local contexts, which may not all be equally equipped to offer good quality of life in pandemic conditions. Exogenous shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and associated “lockdown” policies, may lead to a re-evaluation of the costs and benefits of specific places as residential location, e.g., because certain location factors or amenities suddenly shift in relevance. How did the COVID-19 pandemic and “lockdown” policies affect the costs and benefits of residential locations? And how may this be reflected in patterns of migration flows and settlement structure? This project aims to investigate the role of quality of life in interregional migration and, through this lens, to examine potential consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for urban and rural population growth.
The project analyses the case of Germany using two methodological perspectives: first, based on secondary data of aggregate migration flows and second, for individual decision-making via an online experiment in the context of spatial choice modelling. The contribution of this project is, on the one hand, to provide empirical evidence on the consequences of COVID-19 for migration and, by extension, for urban and rural population growth. On the other hand, with an experimental approach, this project implements a methodology that is still rarely applied in the field of geography but could support our understanding of decision-making processes for migration behaviour. Thus, the project offers empirical evidence on socio-spatial consequences of COVID-19 and contributes to the migration literature, but also aims to engage with the interdisciplinary potential of integrating more experimental approaches into geographic research.
Emma Ormerod is a Lecturer in Economic Geography in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development (CURDS) within the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. Emma has two main strands of research interests, firstly the relationship between housing and the economy through increasingly entrepreneurial forms of housing governance, and secondly, gender inequality in local and regional development. Both of these areas of work raise critical questions about transparency, ‘publicness’, politics, power and wider democracy.
“I am really pleased to receive this Early Career Grant and the support of the Regional Studies Association to undertake new research which will deepen our understanding of intersecting inequalities, particularly as women globally continue to be denied equal opportunities to make decisions and shape urban and regional life.”
(Re)Setting the Agenda: Investigating the Gendered Power-relations in the Leadership of Regional Development and Policy-making
This project will challenge the masculine-coded forms of place-leadership in regional development by closely examining the different approaches to leadership that exist within regions, and ways in which different conceptualisations of power are enacted and shape policy-making and development visions.
Early Career Research Grant Scheme
This award is open to individual applicants in their early career (five years maximum between the date showing on their PhD certificate and the application deadline). Applicants must be based within an eligible higher education institution and must be a current, early career member of the RSA and throughout the duration of the grant (please note that applicants may apply for membership at the same time as applying for the grant).
The RSA Early Career Research Grant (EC) is provided to support a discrete piece of regional studies and/or regional science research.
The value of the grant is up to £10,000 (c. $13,300; c. €11,800). The grant has a maximum time span of 18 months and reporting conditions apply. The full Terms and Conditions governing the grant are available in the EC Handbook. Instructions and link for applications can be found at the bottom of this page.