We are pleased to announce that the RSA Board agreed renewal funding for the Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalisms. The NOIR Research Network has been active since 2019 and challenges regional studies to attend to infrastructural questions, by critically unpacking how infrastructure shapes regions, lives, and developmental pathways. NOIR’s Phase 2 will extend and deepen the existing network through the theme “Infrastructures of Regional Connectivity”, to emphasize how infrastructural regionalism can assist scholars and practitioners develop policy outcomes that facilitate equitable regional development. NOIR remains organized around four central tenets: the value of interdisciplinary approaches to infrastructure; infrastructural and regional governance; seeing like a region; and infrastructural lives.
The target is that NOIR’s next phase will gather data and develop concepts around regional connectivity that will be subject of a subsequent RSA Policy Expo application. Key goals for Phase 2 include expanding network membership; engaging with the practitioner/policy community; and developing collaborative research around the theme of ‘infrastructures of regional connectivity’. More details on NOIR can be found here.
The RSA is looking forward to continuing working with the network’s community and the organisers Jen Nelles, Oxford Brookes University Business School, Jean-Paul Addie, Urban Studies Institute, Georgia State University and Michael Glass, Urban Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh.
“We are very excited for the RSA Research Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) to be extended through 2027. Support from the RSA will enable us to continue tackling critical questions at the intersection of infrastructural and regional studies. NOIR’s first phase developed a novel agenda that placed the region at the center of the ‘infrastructural turn’ in the social and policy sciences. The network’s conferences sessions, panels, and workshops were attended by over 250 people and helped elevate the scholarship of students, early-career, and established researchers with diverse disciplinary and geographic backgrounds. We are incredibly grateful to the RSA for continuing to facilitate this work. NOIR’s second phase will further advance our conceptual and applied understanding of ‘infrastructural regionalisms’ and foster substantive engagement with policymakers and practitioners working on pressing infrastructural issues. NOIR maintains an open approach to membership – we’re looking forward to renewing our existing collaborations and welcoming new members to the network!”
Jean-Paul, Jen, and Michael