JRC’s SMARTER conference stream to take place during the 2023 RSA Annual Conference

News article |

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has joined forces with the Regional Studies Association (RSA) to co-organise the SMARTER conference stream on 15-16 June at the 2023 RSA Annual Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The Regional Studies Association’s Annual Conference 2023 is one of the largest and most important knowledge exchange and networking gathering of the year, bringing together representatives from around 50 different global territories. Established experts, policy makers and early career researchers will meet during the four days conference to exchange ideas and discuss research findings on topics concerning regional and urban development, policy and research.

The JRC’s SMARTER focuses on the challenges and opportunities of placed-based transformations towards sustainability and resilience. The JRC has put together a program that consist of a series of sessions featuring distinguished keynote speakers, two policy dialogues and three paper sessions. 

The SMARTER paper sessions will focus on three broad themes:

  • Place-based perspectives on transformative innovation and transition pathways towards sustainability
  • Place-based approaches to challenge-led policies and governance of sustainability transitions
  • New research designs and methods to inform place-based policies fostering sustainability transitions and territorial resilience.

The JRC welcomed submissions for the above sessions addressing the following topics:

  • Theoretical and conceptual contributions combining sustainability, resilience and recovery in the context of territorial development
  • Evolving global geographies and political economy of innovation for sustainable development
  • Imaginaries of place-based rural and urban transitions towards sustainability
  • New forms of place-based innovation, experimentations and territorial collaborations to address sustainability challenges
  • The role of research and innovation in fostering place-based sustainability transitions
  • Measuring transformative outcomes and impacts of research and innovation for sustainable territorial development
  • Emergence of challenge-led and mission-oriented regional and local innovation strategies and policies in Europe and beyond
  • Critical perspectives on the role of science, technology and innovation for sustainability transitions in rural and peripheral regions and localities
  • Innovative research designs, methods and data to study the dynamics and impact of STI for sustainable territorial development.

The JRC has already selected the papers for each of the sessions from the abstracts submitted through the RSA’s conference portal last March, 2023. Registration to the 2023 annual conference is mandatory for all participants who want to take part in the SMARTER stream. 

Access the full agenda