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2018 RSA Summer College Instructors

Plenary
Plenary Session

Novel Approaches to Sustainable and Inclusive Development

2018 RSA Europe’s Socio-Spatial Dynamics Summer College, Cagliari, Sardinia

Emanuela Marrocu, CRENoS, Università di Cagliari, Italy


Emanuela Marrocu is Full Professor of Econometrics at the Department of Economics and Business, University of Cagliari. She is Director of the Centre for North South Economic Research (CRENoS), University of Cagliari and University of Sassari. She attained her PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) in 2000. Her main research fields are: spatial econometrics and time series econometrics; productivity analysis at regional and firm level; determinants of knowledge diffusion and innovative performance; tourism economics.
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Riccardo Crescenzi, London School of Economics, UK


Prof Riccardo Crescenzi is (Full) Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics where he is also affiliated with the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC). Riccardo is the current holder of a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, one of the most competitive research funding schemes in Europe. He is also an Associate at the Centre for International Development (CID) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Taubman Centre, at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence). Riccardo has provided academic advice to, amongst others, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Parliament, the European Commission (DG Regional Policy), the Inter-American Investment Bank (IADB), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and various national and regional governments. Riccardo is the 2016 recipient of the Talented Young Italians Award for ‘Research and Innovation’ “in recognition of his outstanding research accomplishments” and the 2017 recipient of the Geoffrey J.D. Hewings Award from the North American Regional Science Council for “outstanding contribution to Regional Science Research”. His research is focused on Regional Economic Development and Growth, Innovation, Multinational Firms and the analysis and evaluation of European Union development policies.
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Alessandro Plaisant, Universita di Sassari, Italy


I’m an associate professor of the Department of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning, the University of Sassari, where I teach Urban Planning and Analysis of urban systems. I held a Ph.D. at the University of Cagliari, after spending eight month as a fellow at the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, the University of Melbourne, focusing my research on decision-making processes in public policymaking, strategic planning, policies and pluralism-oriented tools. I combine my research activities with higher education, international and institutional cooperation activities, as director of the II level International Master’s Program “Advanced Methods and Tools for Sustainable Planning”, developed in academic cooperation with Harbin Institute of Technology  and as scientific coordinator of the activities planned for the funded national call “extraordinary Program of intervention for urban redevelopment and security of the metropolitan suburbs”, specifically in Sant’Avendrace district, the Municipality of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy). Among my recent publications: Urban regeneration of peripheral areas: the critical role of the connective space in an italian city. (Aa.Vv) Urban Design Journal, 2018; Planning for S.M.A.R.T. development: a bottom up approach to lead knowledge-based tourism development in low density rural districts (Aa.Vv.), INPUT, 2016.
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David Bailey, Aston University, UK

More infromation will be available in due course.
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Stefano Usai, CRENoS, Università di Cagliari, Italy


Stefano Usai is a full professor of Applied Economics at the University of Cagliari and a researcher of CRENoS (Center for North-South Economic Research). He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Law and Social Sciences. He graduated in Political Science, majoring in Economics, at the University of Cagliari, then received the M.A. in Economics and the Mphil in Industrial and Business Studies at the University of Warwick and later the Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Naples. His research focus is on regional economic development and growth, with special emphasis on knowledge production and diffusion, and processes related to technological change, innovation and structural change. Current projects include topics on green innovation, dynamics of regional specialization in European and Italian regions and international and interregional trade. He is Associate Editor of Regional Studies.
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Dieter F. Kogler, Spatial Dynamics Lab, UCDublin, Ireland


Dieter F. Kogler is the co-founder and academic director of the UCD Spatial Dynamics Lab.  He is an Associate Prof. in Economic Geography at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin. His research focus is on the geography of innovation and evolutionary economic geography, with particular emphasis on knowledge production and diffusion, and processes related to technological change, innovation, and economic growth.  Dr. Kogler is an ERC Starter Grant Holder with the following project title: Technology Evolution in Regional Economies (TechEvo). This is a 5-year, €1.5m research project with the objective to produce a series of economic indicators, models and tools which will enable firms and policy makers, across Europe, to make more informed and better location-based investment decisions to boost innovation and drive regional prosperity; see here for further details. His career path combines professional, education and research experience acquired in Europe, the United States, and Canada within a variety of areas pertaining to the spatial analysis of socio-economic phenomena.  He is an Editor of Regional Studies and an Editorial Board member of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, both of which are highly regarded top-tier peer-reviewed journals concerned with research on the spatial dimensions of contemporary socio-economic processes. Further, Dr. Kogler is also an editor of the Economic Geography book series published by Springer. Since 2014 he is a Board Member (Conference and Events Coordinator) of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), which serves as a global forum for city and regional research, development and policy, as well as an Associate Editor for the RSA’s interdisciplinary open access journal, Regional Studies, Regional Science. In 2016, he spent a period as a Visiting Professor at the Centre for North South Economic Research(CRENoS) at the University of Cagliari and University of Sassari in Sardinia, Italy.
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Elisa Giuliani, University of Pisa, Italy


Elisa Giuliani (PhD SPRU, Sussex University) is Full Professor at the Department of Economics & Management of the University of Pisa, and 2017-2018 visiting scholar at MIT Sloan School of Management. She is Associate Editor for Research Policy, and part of the Editorial Boards of Economic Geography, the Journal of Economic Geographyand the Business and Human Rights Journal. Her research cuts across disciplines, including international business, economic geography and development studies. Her work has been published in several international journals such as the Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of World Business, Regional Studies, Research Policy and World Development.
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Alessandra Faggian, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy


Alessandra Faggian is Professor of Applied Economics and Director of Social Sciences at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy, and is President of the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) and co-editor of the journal Papers in Regional Science. Dr Faggian’s research interests lie in the fields of regional and urban economics, demography, labour economics and economics of education. Her publications cover a wide range of topics including migration, human capital, labour markets, creativity and local innovation and growth. She has co-authored over 80 academic publications. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Oxford Economics Papers, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Feminist Economics, Regional Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Journal of Regional Science and The Journal of Economic Geography. Alessandra is the 2007 recipient of the Moss Madden Memorial Medal by the Regional Science Association International: Irish and British section (RSAIBIS) for the best paper published in the year 2006 and the 2015 recipient of the Geoffrey Hewings Award by The North American Regional Council for outstanding research contribution by a young scholar in the field of regional science.
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Ron Boschma, Utrecht University, Netherlands


Boschma has been a Full Professor in Regional Economics at the Department of Human Geography and Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands since 2005. Since 2017, he has also been Professor at the UiS Business School of Stavanger University, Norway. Between 2013-2017, he was also the Full Professor of Innovation Studies at Lund University, Sweden, and between 2013-2015, he was the Director of the Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy (CIRCLE), Lund University. Professor Boschma was a member of the Research, Innovation and Science Experts (RISE) High-Level Advisory Body to European Commissioner Carlos Moedas during 2015-2016. Professor Boschma has published works in several international journals, on topics as varied as evolutionary economic geography, the spatial evolution of industries, geography of innovation, structure and evolution of spatial networks, agglomeration externalities and regional growth, and regional diversification.
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Peter Kedron, Arizona State University, USA


Dr. Peter Kedron is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University.  His research program generates new knowledge about the economic, social, and ecological processes that combine to create persistently uneven patterns of spatial development.  As a member of the Spatial Analysis Research Center (SPARC), Dr. Kedron develops spatial data science solutions and mixed methodologies to study the evolution of the economic landscape and the socio-ecological interactions that shape urban environments.  Peter has served as a co-principal investigator on multiple National Science Foundation funded projects exploring topics ranging from the spatial reorganization of the United States biofuel sector (BCS-1338970), and socio-ecological adaptation to climatic variability (OIA-1301789), to the impacts of compositional and configurational data on statistical biases associated with changes in spatial resolution (BCS-1561021).
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Enda Murphy, University College Dublin, Ireland

More infromation will be available in due course.
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Michael Mutukrishna, London School of Economics, UK


Michael Muthukrishna is an Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Research Associate in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also an Affiliate of the Yale Applied Cooperation Team, Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD, and Technical Director of The Database of Religious History. His research focuses on human evolution and cultural change, building a theory of human behavior using methods from evolutionary biology and testing predictions using methods from experimental psychology and experimental economics. Bringing evolutionary biology and psychology to developmental economics offers new insights to old challenges, including corruption, innovation, inequality, cross-national differences in economic growth, and the expansion of the moral circle and rise of large-scale cooperation. Michael’s research is informed by his educational background in engineering and psychology, with graduate training in evolutionary biology, economics, and statistics and his personal background living in Sri Lanka, Botswana, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
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Lewis Dijkstra, DG Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission, Belgium


Lewis Dijkstra is the Head of the Economic Analysis Sector of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy in the European Commission. He is the editor the Cohesion Reports, which analyse economic, social and environmental issues in EU regions and cities. His latest work and publications cover topics such as regional quality of government, urban economic development, regional economic and demographic projections and the definition of cities. He works closely with the OECD, the World Bank, the European Environmental Agency, the Joint Research Centre and Eurostat. With these partners, he has launched projects on regional competitiveness, business demography, regional well-being, transport and demography among others. He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University, New Jersey, a MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Political Science from the University of Ghent, Belgium.
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