RSA Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Conference 2022 Bridging Old and New Divides:

Global Dynamics, Regional transformations

13th – 17th September 2022

Research Centre Global Dynamics, Leipzig University, Germany and Online

Special session submission deadline: 21st March 2022

Abstract submission deadline: 16th May 2022

Regional development is often treated as being based on a clear and consensual perspective on the kind of progress needed. But academic as well as political debates are far less univocal. Regional studies in the past three decades have articulated a range of new and old social, spatial, economic and political divides, especially between urban centers and peripheralised non-metropolitan areas that stem from the dominant regional development approaches in CEE and beyond. Existing research has emphasized the capacity of Neoliberalism to reinvent and consolidate itself after each juncture of crisis, which has been at the expense of foreclosing alternative developmental paths. A range of recent processes, such as the so called ‘migrant crisis’, rise of illiberal populism, questioning the European project, the rising economic influence of China in CEE, adaptation to climate change and recently the COVID-19 pandemic, have sparked further anxieties and fears of new divides and exclusions.

The RSA CEE Conference in Leipzig will open up a dialogue around these divides, exploring how they shape current research and regional policy in, across, and beyond CEE. We are particularly keen to see research which views globalisation not as a recent process only, nor simply emanating from an assumed centre creating all kinds of peripheries, but one that is deeply rooted in a longer process of adaptation to the global condition and over-time transformations of the capitalist world economy. We invite contributions scrutinising development as a concept by bringing forward alternative approaches. The conference intends to challenge current and highlight new research perspectives to regional development in CEE, bridging disciplinary, temporal, socio-spatial, scalar, knowledge production, policy, material-immaterial and theory-practice divides. The conference warmly invites inputs from researchers, policymakers and practitioners working in all areas related to regional policy, regional development and regional studies.

The RSA CEE Conference in Leipzig offers an excellent opportunity for initiating a progressive and multidisciplinary dialogue on, but not limited to, the following themes and topics:

•   (Alternative) economies:

• New and old economies and their spaces
• Winners and losers of economic transformation and transnationalisation
• New spaces of innovation, between mainstream, social and bottom-up alternatives
• Between foreign direct investments and locally rooted economies
• Deindustrialization and reindustrialization between path renewal and path dependency
• Sustainable development and green growth
• Infrastructures and foundational economies for building resilient regions
• Diverse economies, post-development and de-growth
• Hidden economies of everyday life and social reproduction