Deadline for aplications postponed until Monday, April 7, 2025

Download 2025 Aisre Summer School Call

Artificial Intelligence, Globalisation and New Territorial Divides. Theories and applications

9 – 13 June 2025

Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering

Politecnico di Milano

AISRe is proud to announce its sixth summer school on Artificial Intelligence, Globalisation and New Territorial Divides. Theories and applications organized by the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with the Horizon Europe Project ESSPIN (Economic, Social and SPatial Inequalities in Europe in the Era of Global Mega-trends, grant agreement No 101061104).
The first two decades of the new century have been marked by a rapidly changing environment, characterised by radical technological transformations coupled with an altered global landscape and a reorientation of international trade and value chains, in response of the pandemic and of rising geopolitical tension and energy crisis. A recurrent conclusion made by many scholars and commentators is that the combination of these mega-trends has created rather unfavourable conditions for balanced growth and socio-spatial resilience, thus amplifying one of the chief paradoxes of our time: the co-occurrence of powerful technology with increasing inequalities among individuals, social groups, regions and cities. Indeed, the rise of inequalities taking off at the turn of the millennium has been marked by a novel spatial dimension driven by the increasing split between a small group of big, wealthy, resilient and high-income superstar city-regions and the remaining ones, suffering from a mix of stagnating and/or low productivity, limited opportunities and economic development prospects.
The summer school will introduce PhD students and early career researchers to this rich and expanding debate by merging theoretical and empirical perspectives. In particular, the school will propose an overview of the main economic theories analysing the genesis, causes and the persistence of regional and urban divides, by digging into the role of the transformations induced by artificial intelligence and the restructuring of global value chains and exploring the possible policy actions at the regional and urban scales to mitigate the potential expansion of territorial divides.

Organisation of the school
The school is articulated into 5 days from 9 to 13 June 2025 and will be taught in English. Each day will include lecture sessions by expert scholars in the field and paper development sessions, with the following daily timetable:
8.30-10.30: lectures
11.00-13.00: students’ presentations
14.00-16.00: lectures
16.30-18.30: students’ presentations
A Meet the Editors section will be organized with the participation of Andrea Caragliu (Regional Science Policy and Practice), Ugo Fratesi (Spatial Economic Analysis), Balázs Lengyel (Global Challenges and Regional Science), Laura Resmini (Scienze Regionali).

Lecturers
Domenico Scalera (Università del Sannio), Emanuele Felice (IULM), Camilla Lenzi (Politecnico di Milano), Margarita Kalamova (OECD), Nicola Cortinovis (Utrecht University), Giovanni Perucca (Politecnico di Milano), Balázs Lengyel (Corvinus University of Budapestand HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies), Ana Moreno Monroy (OECD), Andrea Conte (EU JRC), Raffaele Paci (Università di Cagliari and CRENOS).

Local scientific and organizing committee
Camilla Lenzi (Coordinator), Roberta Capello, Andrea Caragliu, Silvia Cerisola, Simona Ciappei, Roberto Dellisanti, Elisa Panzera, Giovanni Perucca.
Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering.

How to apply
The call is open to PhD students and early career researchers interested in regional science. Applications must be submitted by Monday, April 7, 2025 30th of March, 2025 filling out the application form at the link:

https://forms.gle/9LXNyMtGyoZ6wdB46

Candidates must send:

1. An updated Curriculum Vitae specifying the candidate’s research experience (Europass format, max. 5 page);
2. an extended abstract of their research project, thesis proposal or working paper, including: a) state of the art of the literature on the topic; b) research questions and expected contribution of the work; c) methods and data used or foreseen; d) expected or preliminary results (max. 1000 words);
3. a motivation letter detailing the reason for application and the candidate’s expectations regarding the school.
4. ID card and copy of your AISRe membership or RSAI membership.

All files (pdf format) can be upload in the application form.
The selection committee will evaluate the applications based on the documentation submitted.
For further information, please write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact Prof.ssa Camilla Lenzi (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
A maximum of 30 candidates will be selected for participation, and they will receive an email notification by 10 April 2025.

Registration
The participation fee will be 135 euros. Coffee breaks and lunches are included in the participation fee.
Participants are required to be individual members of AISRe. Individual membership has a cost of 130 Euros, reduced to 65 Euros for young researchers (younger than 35, doctoral students and post-doc researchers). For school registration, you must register on the AISRe website (www.aisre.it) by creating your own user profile. You will find instructions for payment in your personal area. For further information, you may contact AISRe secretariat Diana Sarmiento at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Venue
The 6th AISRe Summer School will take place at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milano.

More info at: https://www.aisre.it/en/6th-summer-school-aisre-milan-2025/

Meet Andrea Caragliu, the new Editor-in-Chief of Regional Science Policy and Practice

Andrea Caragliu is Associate Professor of Regional and Urban Economics at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he acts as Coordinator of the Ph.D. programme in Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering. His work focuses on agglomeration economies, macroeconometric regional growth, cross-border regions, and smart urban development.

Assoc. Prof. Caragliu was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Regional Science Policy and Practice, a journal of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), in January 2025. Previously, he had acted as Executive Director of the RSAI and joined several Horizon/FP, DG Regio, and ESPON projects as partner/principal investigator.

What inspired your interest in Regional and Urban Economics?

As a young graduate in Economics, I started to focus on growth issues – and, as pointed out by Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas in the hyper-cited 1988 JME paper, “The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like [those related to growth] are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Later, upon applying for a post-doc position at Politecnico, I discovered a world of colleagues who focused on the spatial breakdown of the economic outcomes that are determined by the rational decision of consumers and firms to locate in a place, due to the net benefits expected from this decision.

As the new Editor-in Chief of Regional Science Policy & Practice, what is your vision for the journal?

Let me take a chance here to highlight the recent Editorial that the new Team (André Chagas, Hee-Jung Jun, Neil Reid, Terciane Sabadini Carvalho, and myself) have just published in issue 1/2025. Now that the journal is gold open access since January 2024, all articles published in RSPP, the Editorial included, are fully accessible to everybody.

The two previous Editorial Boards, in particular the Editors-in-Chief, Michael Carroll and Tomaz Dentinho, did a terrific job. The journal has grown in terms of the number of submissions, average quality of the papers published, and overall impact. Still, there is always room for improvement. Our top priority now is to strengthen the journal’s identity. We want to make RSPP the reference journal of the best papers on regional policies, as well as on the regional impacts of space-blind policies, for all disciplines.

This first goal walks hand in hand with a further effort to raise the bar of the average quality of the papers published in Regional Science Policy & Practice, to better serve the RSAI community and regional science stakeholders globally.

As challenging as these goals may seem, we look forward to your support in making them happen. Please send your best spatial policy papers to RSPP and let us all make it the reference journal in the field of regional and urban policies.

What makes Regional Science Policy & Practice unique?

Regional Science Policy & Practice is among the very few journals explicitly focusing on regional and urban policies. The Editorial Team have been carefully selected to provide authors with a high quality and speedy review process, constructive comments, and the use of an inclusive language. RSPP is open to everyone, and we look forward to receiving high quality papers on regional and urban policies from all backgrounds.

All the above, combined with the global regional science community’s commitment to the discipline, make the Editorial Team believe that authors who decide to submit to RSPP over the next couple of years will benefit from the journal’s ongoing growth – in terms of impact, indexation, and the possibility to influence policy debates.

What are the hot topics in the field right now? Are there any themes on which you are particularly looking forward to receiving submissions?

While the focus on policies may suggest that RSPP occupies a relatively small niche in the scientific landscape, I am convinced that the continuous developments in new policies, as reactions to an ever-changing landscape, will provide countless sources of inspiration for regional scientists. One aspect that is haunting regional scientists, urban economists, and geographers globally is the changing interest in spatial policies. Rising global geopolitical tensions are forcing many countries to increase their budget on defense items, while less funding seems to be available to policies that not only focus on places as a means to offset the negative impacts of space-blind policies, but also target places as triggers of bottom-up development. I would also like to stress that the very concept of space-blind policy is tricky, as it seems to suggest that you may enact policies that exert equal effects all over different regions, while everything we do has a set of potential spatial consequences we should not ignore. So, plenty of food for thought!

Have you got any advice for researchers who wish to publish their paper in Regional Science Policy & Practice?

Think about policy experiments that have a potential spatial breakdown, or of policies that target regions and cities, and use the best empirical methods (be they quantitative or qualitative – and we welcome practice papers, too!) to find counterintuitive results, capable of influencing the policy agenda.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/regional-science-policy-and-practice/about/news/meet-andrea-caragliu-the-new-editor-in-chief-of-regional-science-policy-and-practice?utm_campaign=STMJ_1740741656_SC&utm_medium=BAN&utm_source=WEB&dgcid=STMJ_1740741656_SC

The APDR invites regional scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers, urban planners, policy makers, and researchers of related disciplines to participate in the 32^nd APDR Congress with the theme "Sustainable Transformation and Spatial Interaction of People and Places: Urban and Rural Landscapes for mobility, migration and tourism" that will be held from 10 to 11 of July, 2025, at the Universidade Portucalense (UPT), Porto, Portugal.

On July 8 and 9, 2025, just before the main conference, a Sustainable Regional Development Academy will be organized for a limited number participants at the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), Porto, Portugal.

The call for Abstracts and Applications are open and your participation is very welcome!

Deadline for Abstracts submissions: April 2, 2025. Authors should submit their abstracts through online submission system by following the link https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/APDR2025

Deadline for Academy Applications: May 15, 2025. More information at https://www.apdr.pt/congresso/2025/academy.html

All information at the congress website: http://www.apdr.pt/congresso/2025.

Looking forward to meeting you in Porto, Portugal!

The Organizing Committee and the Board of APDR

32^nd APDR Congress

Decision by the Evaluation Committee: June 30, 2025

AISRe supports the development of early career researchers (scholars younger than 35 years and who have received their PhD certificate no more than three before the application deadline) by granting a scholarship for a research visiting period in a hosting research institution in the European (EU27 + UK) territory.

ERSA and the Jury of the ERSA Prize Committee are pleased to announce that the ERSA Prize in Regional Science 2025 has been awarded to Professor Michael Storper.

Prof. Storper is Centennial Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also an affiliated scholar at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at Sciences-Po in Paris, as well as at the Department of Urban Planning in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA. He has also been recipient of various awards and scientific recognitions in Europe and in the US. His research expertise covers several fields including Cities and regions; Economic development; Economic geography; Globalization; Technological change. He published several seminal contributions in major peer-reviewed journals as well as authored various books. His scientific contributions have spread innovative ideas and deep insights on the effective strategies to develop metropolitan regions around the globe. Professor Storper is an active member of the regional science community, as organizer/co-organizer or member in the international advisory board of many high-quality scientific events, member of editorial board of regional science journals, etc. In 2022 he delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 61st ERSA Congress in Pecs, Hungary.

The ERSA Prize in Regional Science 2025 will be delivered on 29 August during the Closing Session of 64th ERSA Congress (August 26-29 2025).

Dear colleagues,

Before presenting the congress, we would like to highlight some important details:

1. The congress will take place in October.
2. To simplify procedures, the previous round of communication summaries has been eliminated, so the extended communications or summaries will be the documents to be evaluated by the Scientific Committee.

1. The submission date is brought forward to June 13. In this way, a response can be given by June 30, and travel and registration for the congress can be organized before July 15 (prior to the summer holidays).

1. The virtual option will be maintained to encourage international participation, although we encourage presence as an ideal formula.

1. In relation to the Juan Ramón Cuadrado Young Researcher Award, the participation of any researcher under 33 years of age or whose doctoral thesis defense has been carried out at most two years prior to the date of the congress’s celebration is permitted.

The Spanish and Basque Country and Navarre Associations of Regional Science cordially invite you to participate in the XLIX International Conference on Regional Science, which will be held from the 15th to the 17th of October 2025 at the Pamplona Campus of the University of Navarra at the School of Business and Economics.

As with previous editions, the International Conference on Regional Science is a multidisciplinary forum that offers an overview of regional science and territorial analysis as a starting point. The program will include keynote speeches, panel discussions, and paper presentations. It is the main annual event in Spain for the study, debate, and presentation of academic papers on territorial and regional concepts.

For the XLIX edition, we have chosen the slogan: “Regional Economic Development (RED): In search of improving the Economic, Political and Social Welfare of each Region,” which reflects the importance of addressing, in a comprehensive and participatory manner, the political, social, and economic problems that affect the regions in a context of enhancing economic growth and prosperity of different areas within a country.

RED involves not only attracting labor and capital, improving income, job opportunities, and demographic trends, but also fostering innovation and creativity to help those regions that lag to have sustainable economic growth. In the last decades, we have seen that disadvantages like pollution and insecurity hinder regional economic growth. Therefore, our approach to helping those regions should be integrated, taking all the factors into account.

From a regional perspective, these issues can be tackled through analysis, planning, management, and cooperation. Analysis entails gathering data and information and studying specific processes related to RED. Planning involves designing strategies and policies that promote the efficient and responsible use of regional resources, considering all aspects of a region’s development. Management involves optimizing resources and creating an environment that supports sustainable economic growth. Cooperation involves promoting participation and dialogue among different actors and interests in different territories, as well as seeking agreements and alliances that enhance economic development and provide economic security at intervals throughout different regions.

We aim for the XLIX edition to serve as a forum for discussing the role of regions, cities, and rural areas in addressing the multidimensional challenges of regional economic development. This discussion will take a multidisciplinary approach, covering the economic, social, political, technological, and cultural dimensions of the issue.

We encourage your participation in the XLIX Meeting of Regional Studies. This is a unique opportunity to network with fellow experts and potential collaborators. We hope you enjoy Pamplona, the “city of the thousand titles,” declared a National Historic Artistic Monument. Its defensive walls and Citadel constitute one of Europe´s most interesting and best-preserved Renaissance military complexes.

As in previous editions, the presentation of results of ongoing research work for which a complete article does not exist yet will be accepted. In order for the Scientific Committee to consider the acceptance of said works, the submission of an extended summary with a minimum length of 1,500 words will be required. Here you can find the templates and more information about the congress.

Communications that, in addition to being unpublished, have been made by researchers of no more than 33 years of age or whose doctoral thesis defense has been carried out, at most, two years prior to the date of the congress and are presented as a part of the parallel sessions, they will be eligible for the Juan Ramón Cuadrado Young Researchers Award. The jury in charge of awarding the prize will be the Scientific Committee. The signing authors of the award-winning communication will receive a document accrediting the award and a gift.

Doctoral students who are in the early stages of their doctoral theses and research-oriented master’s students will enjoy a reduced registration fee to access the parallel sessions of the conference and participate in the special sessions for young researchers. In these sessions, you will be able to make a brief presentation of your research ideas.

The Organizing Committee and the Scientific Committee also invite you to propose a Special Session at the Congress. Proposals can be made from today until May 15 and will be disseminated as they are received and approved by the Scientific Committee and the Organizing Committee. The title of the session and the name of the coordinator or coordinators, along with a summary of its content, must be sent to the Congress Secretariat: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. It is recommended to secure at least 4 contributions for each special session. In the case of receiving a high number of works, they will be distributed into several time slots, according to the criteria of the coordinators.

Sincerely. We will be waiting for you in Pamplona,

The Organizing Committee

The Martin Beckmann RSAI Annual Award for the Best Paper in Papers in Regional Science

Winner 2025

RSAI has the great pleasure to announce that the commission for the 2025 Martin Beckmann award composed by the RSAI Fellows Eduardo Haddad (LARSA), Janet Kohlhase (NARSC), Erik Verhoef, (ERSA) and Rosella Nicolini (EiC of PIRS), has completed the selection of the papers published in Papers in Regional Science (PIRS) in 2024..

The commission selected the following article as the recipient of the 2025 Martin Beckmann award

Giorgio Fazio, Sara Maioli, Nirat Rujimora, "Building back greener, levelling-up or both? An assessment of the economic and environmental efficiency transition of UK regions",
Published in Papers in Regional Science, Volume 103, Issue 6, 2024, 100053, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1056819024000733

Motivation:

This contribution tackles the relevant and open question of the implementation of effective policies to achieve two goals at regional level: “building back greener” and “levelling-up”. The approach implemented by the authors is empirical. The setting of reference is the UK regions for the period 2005-2020 and their study relies on an original data sample. The research strategy exploits the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate the regional and environmental efficiency, whereas the computation of the Markov transition probabilities is meant to quantify the regional transition probabilities to improve at least one the two previous efficiencies. Results emphasize that there is a trade-off between the two types of efficiencies for more than half of the regions and that the costs of transition are unequally distributed. Authors also identify that regions are more likely to become efficient in both directions if they are already environmentally efficient. Furthermore, the empirical analysis does not provide evidence of spatial spillovers for the environmental transition process, but they matter for regional economic efficiency.  The final discussion of this contribution is timely and relevant to inspire effective regional policies. Evidence at hand suggests that there is a clear need of strong coordination between place-based policy and national governments to fully achieve the two selected goals.

Job Opportunity at the JRC: Economic Analyst - Digital Innovation 

They are looking for a motivated Economic Analyst to join the JRC Digital Economy Unit in Ispra, Italy. As part of the DIGINNOVA project, you'll analyze digital innovation trends, AI adoption, and their economic impacts — translating insights into EU policy recommendations.

? Deadline: April 14, 2025
? Location: Ispra, Italy

? Vacancy Details