The third EPRC webinar of 2023 was held on 26 April (11:00 – 12:00 UK) over Zoom. Iryna Fil Kristensen, Lecturer at the Department of Human Geography of Örebro University, presented on “Leadership and governance challenges in delivering place-based transformation in metropolitan areas”.
The presentation was based on a recent paper that considers the unfolding of Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) in one of Europe’s innovation-leading metropolitan regions: Stockholm, Sweden. Theoretically, it is linked to debates around change agency and reflects more broadly, which implications arise for metropolitan innovation-leader regions and which are of a more generic nature. It argues that actor endowments, dense networks, experience with participatory governance processes and good governance are not sufficient for a successful implementation of RIS3. It finds that transformative regional innovation policy is contingent upon the adequate empowerment of change agents rather than on general regional preconditions.
Iryna Fil Kristensen is a university lecturer at the Department of Human Geography, Örebro University, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Salzburg (Austria) and has four years of postdoc experience, most recently from the HEC Montréal Business School (Chair of Innovation and Regional Development) in Canada. Iryna has also previous experience as a Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio (Nordic Research Institute for Regional Development and Planning under the Nordic Council of Ministers) in Stockholm, specializing in local and regional economic development with national and international experience in this field. She was constantly involved in a number of European and Nordic research projects such as Horizon2020, ESPON, and Nordic cooperation programmes. Her main line of research is policy and regional development with a particular focus on the practice and processes of policy engagement.
Iryna’s presentation can be accessed here, and the webinar recording can be viewed on the EPRC’s YouTube page here.
Future EPRC webinars will delve into sustainability, regional policy and development topics.
If you would like to attend, watch out for updates and registrations by following @eprc_eu on Twitter, European Policies Research Centre on LinkedIn, or register for our webinar mailing list via marie.c.devine@strath.ac.uk.