Keynote Speakers

Roberta Capello
Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Maryann Feldman
University of North Carolina, USA

Susan Parnell
University of Cape Town, South of Africa

Yannis Psycharis
Panteion University, Greece

Jacques François Thisse
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

André Torre
University Paris Saclay, INRA-Agroparistech, France

Philip McCann
University Of Sheffield, UK



Plenary and Keynote Sessions
Preliminary programme, update 1 April, 2019

Opening Ceremony
Tuesday, 27 August, 16.30 - 18.00
Professor Maryann Feldman - University of North Carolina, USA

  Platform Capitalism & Regional income disparities: the power of monopolies & finance

Maryann P. Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, an Adjunct Professor of Finance at Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Research Director at UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.  Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth. Dr. Feldman is an editor of the journal, Research Policy, and chairs an interagency working group on Science Policy. From 2014-2017, Dr. Feldman held a joint appointment at the National Science Foundation as the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program Director. Dr. Feldman was the winner of the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation and the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. Her dissertation, Geography of Innovation, examined the spatial distribution of industrial innovation and provided an empirical model of the factors and resources that affected the production of new product innovation. This publication is noted to be the first time that the term “geography” was used to describe spatial phenomenon and is now an accepted lexicon. Currently, the geography of innovation is a subject area under the strategy division of the Academy of Management. More

Professor Jacques François Thisse - Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

  About the Origin of Cities

 Jacques-François Thisse is Professor Emeritus at the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) where he has served faithfully for more than four decades (with a few excursions to American and Parisian universities). He served two terms as President of CORE and bears major responsibility for the enviable reputation of the center and its scientific accomplishments. Thisse received his undergraduate and graduate training in mathematics and economics at the University of Liège and was awarded the doctorate in 1975. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Montreal in 2005, by the Solvay price of the Belgian Science foundation in 2006, by the Pantheon-Assas Paris II University in January 2010, and by the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan last April. He has published more than 200 articles in various international journals (Econometrica, Journal of Economic theory) that deal with multiple disciplinary fields: the industrial economy, the space economy, the public economy, game theory, Etc. At the end of the years 1970, he was one of the first to analyse the functioning of markets on which goods of different qualities were sold (product differentiation). Thereafter, he was at the origin of almost all the decisive advances in this field, notably by studying the behaviour of firms when consumer choices for goods can be represented in the form of probabilities (model logit). More

Plenary Keynote Lecture
Wednesday, 28 August, 09.00 - 10.30
Professor Susan Parnell - University of Cape Town, South of Africa

  South Africa experiences in the context of urban world challenges

Susan Parnell is a Professor of Geography at the University of Cape Town (South of Africa). Her early academic research was in the area of urban historical geography and focussed on the rise of racial residential segregation and the impact of colonialism on urbanisation and town planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1994 and democracy in South Africa her work has shifted to contemporary urban policy research (local government, poverty reduction and urban environmental justice). By its nature this research is not been purely academic, but has involved liaising with local and national government and international donors. Susan Parnell is also on the boards of several local NGOs concerned with poverty alleviation, sustainability and gender equity in post-apartheid South Africa. She serves on a number of national and international advisory research panels relating to urban reconstruction. More detail on Susan Parnell's research profile is available here.

Keynote Lecture
Wednesday, 28 August, 11.00 - 13.00
Professor Roberta Capello - Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Regional development theories and formalised economic approaches: an evolving relationship

Roberta Capello is full professor of Regional Economics at Politecnico of Milan. She got her first degree in Economics at Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy, and her Ph.D. in Economics, at the Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She was President of the Regional Science Association International (2009-2010), Member of the European Organising Committee and Treasurer of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) (2000-2006), and National Secretary of the Italian Section of the International Regional Science Association (1995-1998).  She is Editor in chief of Papers in Regional Science (Wiley Blackwell, Oxford) and of the Italian Journal of Regional Science (FrancoAngeli, Milan), and of the Italian Journal of Regional Science (Il Mulino, Bologna). She is Editorial board member of several international scientific journals. She is the author of a textbook in Regional Economics, published in Italian (Il Mulino, 2004, 2° ed. 2016), in English (Routledge, 2007, 2° ed. 2016) and in Chinese (Economics and Management Publisher, 2015). She holds a Carrier prize of the 50° ERSA anniversary (Jonkoping, 2010), and a Laurea Honoris Causa from the West University of Timisoara, Romania (October, 2012). She is Fellow of the Regional Science Association International (since 2013). She is Deputy Director of the ABC Department (2017-2019). More details on Roberta Capello is available here.

Papers in Regional Science Keynote Lecture
Wednesday, 28 August 2019, 16.30 - 18.00
Professor André Torre - University Paris Saclay, INRA-Agroparistech, France

Is there a smart development for rural areas?

André Torre is 1st class Research Professor at the University Paris-Saclay, INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research), and AgroParistech school of engineers. He is a doctor in economics and accredited to supervise research. He is President of ERSA (the European Regional Science Association), Director of the PSDR research programs (For and About Regional development), and Head of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Paris-Saclay. He is the managing editor of the Revue d’Economie Régionale et Urbaine (Journal of Regional and Urban Economics), and editorial board member of several international scientific journals. His research was for a long time at the cross roads of spatial and industrial economics, and related to the analysis of proximity relations and their role in coordination processes. It has in recent years become more multi-disciplinary and focused increasingly on questions related to land use planning and territorial and rural development processes. He has published 150 articles in peer review journals and 20 books , mostly on issues related to spatial dimensions and coordination between people or groups of stakeholders. More details on André Torre is available here.

Regional Science Policy and Practice Keynote Lecture
Thursday, 29 August, 09.00 - 10.30
Professor Yannis Psycharis - Panteion University, Greece

 The new landscape of regional inequalities in the European Union in the aftermath of economic crisis: analysis and policy challenges for the programming period post-2020

Yannis Psycharis is Professor of Regional Economic Analysis at the Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece. He also taught regional economics at the Department of Planning and Regional Development of the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece (2000-2009). He was Head of the Department of Economic and Regional Development (2016-2018), Director of the Greek National School of Public Administration and Local Government (2010-2012) and Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics (2007-2008). Currently he is Director of the Regional Development Institute, and Deputy President of the Consignment Deposit and Loans Fund. He is a Council of Europe expert and an OECD expert. Member of experts’ scientific committees for the Ministries of the Interior and of the Economy and Finance, and scientific advisor to the Association of Local Government in Greece (KEDE). He was the executive Coordinator of the 46th ERSA Conference on 28 August – September 3, 2006, that was held in Volos Greece and chair of the joint ERSA French speaking (ASRDLF) and Greek section Conference on 5-7 July 2017, Athens, Greece. He has been member of the Scientific Committee to many ERSA conferences, he is a member of the European Organizing Committee (EOC) of ERSA and member of the Editorial Board of Regional Science Policy and Practice and Région et Développement. His research interests include regional economic analysis, regional policy, regional public finance and public administration. More details on Yannis Psycharis' academic profile here

Closing Ceremony
Friday, 30 August, 16.30 - 18.00
Professor Philip McCann - University Of Sheffield, UK

 The Geography of Discontent: Different Narratives, Different Perspectives and Different Evidence

Philip McCann is Professor of Urban and Regional Economics in the University of Sheffield Management School. Philip is also the Tagliaferri Research Fellow in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge 2015-2018 and Honorary Professor of Economic Geography in the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 2017-2022. He is one of the world’s most highly cited and widely published spatial economists and economic geographers of his generation, with currently 4378 ISI-Web of Science citations, H-index= 32, (624 citations in 2018), 5599 Scopus citations, H-index = 38, (762 citations in 2018) and 14,758 Google Scholar citations (H-index = 57). He has won awards for his research in various countries: the 2002 Hewings Award from NARSC (North America); the 2007 Moss Madden Memorial Medal (UK and Ireland); the 2010 ERSA 50th Anniversary Award (Europe); the 2016 Best Paper in Regional Studies Award (International); the 2018 Best Paper in Regional Studies Award (International); and the 2019 ERSA Prize in Regional Science. His research has generated over £4.5m/€5m in external research funding, with over £3m as a Principal Investigator. More details on Philip McCann is available here.