The fifth EPRC webinar of the 2020-21 Autumn Series was held November 18th, 2020 (12:00 – 13:00 UK) over Zoom. Dr Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins presented her research on ‘Regional Spatial Justice: An alternative for territorial cohesion, or another fuzzy concept?’.
Goodwin-Hawkins’ presentation delved on spatial justice - a concept hitherto primarily associated with cities – which has recently entered the regional lexicon. Work by the Horizon 2020 projects IMAJINE and RELOCAL has been particularly pivotal in positioning spatial justice as a potential alternative to European policy ambitions for territorial cohesion. Since formally joining social and economic cohesion as a key goal for EU Cohesion Policy in the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, territorial cohesion has attracted academic attention as a notoriously ‘fuzzy’ concept.
Bryonny has thus asked if a spatial justice approach could bring clarity – or if we are at risk of simply giving new words to old confusions? She outlined the main arguments herself and colleagues have put forward for rescaling a concept originally advocated as ‘the right to the city’. Her critical reflections have turned to the relationship between spatial justice and territorial cohesion, and to what a spatially just regional policy might reasonably look like.
Dr Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins is Senior Research Fellow at the Countryside and Community Research Institute, and an affiliate of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD). Her interdisciplinary work spans rural and regional studies. She contributed to the Horizon 2020 projects IMAJINE and ROBUST, and is currently operational lead for the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) in Southwest England.
The recording of the webinar can be viewed on the EPRC’s YouTube page here.
Our next webinar will take place on Wednesday December 2nd, when Dr Maria Salomaa from the University of Tampere in Finland will present on the role of universities in structural fund implementation. Future webinars this Autumn will delve on topics of regional policy and development.
If you would like to participate in future seminars, watch out for updates and registrations by following @eprc_eu on Twitter.
