***apologies for cross-posting***

Dear list members

In light of ongoing demand, the deadline for abstract submission to the 
workshop on “Knowledge, Policymaking and Learning in European 
Metropolitan Areas: Experiences and Approaches” (25-26 January 2016) 
have been extended to Thursday 5 November. This is to facilitate the 
participation in an interdisciplinary dialogue between regional/urban 
and policy scholars.

We are mainly (but not only) interested in contributions from Southern, 
Central and Eastern Europe to provide a more complete geographical 
overview.
You can find the call for paper below and full information on the 
following link
http://greatpi.eu/2015/10/22/extended-deadline-5-november/

Extended deadline: Thursday 5 November
Please send abstract of about 300 words as expression of interest to 
[log in to unmask]


Best regards,
Nicola Francesco Dotti
www.greatpi.eu


*********************************************************************************************

KNOWLEDGE, POLICYMAKING AND LEARNING IN EUROPEAN METROPOLITAN AREAS: 
EXPERIENCES AND APPROACHES


CONTEXT

The local capacity to auto-regulate internal conflicts, to avoid 
(under-)development lock-in and to react to external stimuli is a 
fundamental challenge for social learning, (multi-level) governance and, 
in general, local policymaking (Armitage, 2007; Garmendia and Stagl, 
2010; Hooghe and Marks, 2003). In this perspective, the idea of 
‘knowledge for innovation’ moves beyond the traditional definition of 
“R&D activities” for technological and market-oriented innovation 
(Moulaert and Nussbaumer, 2005). The notion of learning region (Hassink, 
2005; Lorenzen, 2001; Morgan, 1997; Moulaert and Sekia, 2003) has 
emerged since the early 1990s, recognising that knowledge is produced, 
validated, exchanged, translated, and applied in specific territorial 
contexts where tacit knowledge, local untraded interdependencies and 
cumulative learning process become key aspects (Antonelli and Quéré, 
2002; Gertler, 2003; Storper, 1997). However, a territorial perspective 
on knowledge for policy learning is still an under-explored dimension.

In the current European political debate the notion of ‘resilience’ has 
attracted major attention to analyse the territorial capacity to resist 
and/or recover from economic shocks (Boschma, 2015). From this debate, 
an emerging issue is the local capacity to promote policy changes, so as 
to address evolving grand societal challenges through a place-based 
approach. We propose to focus on policymaking capacities in European 
metropolitan areas as a key dimension in this process. At the local 
level, knowledge is a scarce resource in comparison to larger scales, 
such as national and European ones, where many, and varied, actors are 
involved. On the other hand, large urban areas are known to be the 
centre of supra-local knowledge networks, where many producers, users 
and ‘intermediaries’ are located such as universities, public 
administrations and emerging players acting as ‘brokers’. This opens a 
policy challenge to finding effective ways to develop knowledge that is 
‘useful’ and ‘usable’ for policymaking and learning.


OBJECTIVE

The objective of the workshop is to explore the capacity for 
policymaking in European metropolitan areas with a focus on the role of 
knowledge for policy learning. Specifically, our interest is in local 
conditions supportive to collective learning in order to more 
effectively address grand societal challenges, external stimuli (e.g. 
the current economic crisis, climate change, and other shocks), and 
internal conflicts between actors, as well as promoting local 
reflexivity. The knowledge available locally, the receptivity of public 
administrations and policymakers towards exogenous cognitive sources, 
and the capacity to locally re-combine different forms of knowledge, all 
are fundamental factors in enhancing policy change and learning (Bathelt 
et al., 2004; Bathelt and Turi, 2011; Escribano et al., 2009; Malmberg 
and Maskell, 2006). Are European metropolitan areas able to develop 
knowledge for policymaking and learning? What are the critical factors? 
What are the effects of downscaling from the national/European scale to 
the local level where knowledge is a scarce resource (Capano, 2009; 
Hall, 1993; Krause, 2010; Slembeck, 1997; Witt, 2003)?

Knowledge plays a fundamental role in policy change and learning. 
Nevertheless, knowledge and policymaking have different rationales and 
boundaries, and this nexus has moved beyond the simplistic idea of 
“speaking truth to power” (Wildavsky, 1979), and redefining the role of 
researchers, the concept of knowledge, and the way this is used for 
policymaking purposes (Hoppe, 2005; Lyall et al., 2004; Pohl, 2008). 
Knowledge governance (van Kerkhoff, 2013) has emerged as a new challenge 
opening up a new field of research focusing on the role of ‘boundary 
organizations’ (Hoppe, 2005), ‘knowledge brokers’ (Meyer, 2010) and 
‘knowledge intermediaries’ (Taylor, 2015). They may have different 
labels, but are fundamentally similar. For local policymakers, the 
learning capacities of public administrations, and their absorptive 
capacity from external sources of knowledge, are key issues that make 
knowledge governance a major (yet often underestimated) challenge.



CALL FOR PAPERS

Within this framework, we welcome academic papers addressing the three 
following dimensions from the perspective of European metropolitan 
areas:
-	KNOWLEDGE OF POLICYMAKING: experiences of ‘political resilience’ to 
address metropolitan societal challenges, the role of experts and 
learning strategies of local policymakers.
-	KNOWLEDGE FOR POLICYMAKING: definitions, actors, and dynamics beyond 
universities ‘speaking truth to power’, and the emerging role of 
‘knowledge brokers’ and ‘boundary organizations’.
-	POLICY LEARNING FOR SMART GOVERNANCE? How to define and measure these 
dimensions? Who is learning from whom? Which knowledge governance?



We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions from any 
European metropolitan area. In the submission, we invite to specify the 
methodology and which cases will be presented.


Please send abstracts of around 300 words as expressions of interest to
Dr. Nicola Francesco DOTTI [log in to unmask]


Deadline for abstract submission and expression of interest: EXTENDED 
UNTIL 5 NOVEMBER


Dates of the workshop: 25-26 January 2016 in Brussels.


CONTACTS
Dr. Nicola Francesco DOTTI
[log in to unmask]
www.greatpi.eu

REFERENCES
Antonelli C, Quéré M, 2002, “The Governance of Interactive Learning 
within Innovation Systems” Urban Studies 39(5-6) 1051–1063
Armitage D, 2007, “Governance and the Commons in a Multi-Level World” 
International Journal of the Commons 2(1) 7–32
Bathelt H, Malmberg A, Maskell P, 2004, “Clusters and Knowledge: local 
buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation” Progress 
in Human Geography 28(1) 31–56
Bathelt H, Turi P, 2011, “Local, global and virtual buzz: The importance 
of face-to-face contact in economic interaction and possibilities to go 
beyond” Geoforum 42(5) 520–529
Boschma R, 2015, “Towards an Evolutionary Perspective on Regional 
Resilience” Regional Studies 49(5) 733–751
Capano G, 2009, “Understanding Policy Change as an Epistemological and 
Theoretical Problem” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research 
and Practice 11(1) 7–31
Escribano A, Fosfuri A, Tribó J A, 2009, “Managing external knowledge 
flows: The moderating role of absorptive capacity” Research Policy 38(1) 
96–105
Garmendia E, Stagl S, 2010, “Public participation for sustainability and 
social learning: Concepts and lessons from three case studies in Europe” 
Ecological Economics 69(8) 1712–1722
Gertler M S, 2003, “Tacit knowledge and the economic geography of 
context or, the undefinable tacitness of being (there)” Journal of 
Economic Geography 3(1) 75–99
Hall P A, 1993, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The 
Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain” Comparative Politics 25(3) 
275–296
Hassink R, 2005, “How to unlock regional economies from path dependency? 
 From learning region to learning cluster” European Planning Studies 
13(4) 521–535
Hooghe L, Marks G, 2003, “Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types 
of Multi-level Governance” American Political Science Review 97(2) 
233–243
Hoppe R, 2005, “Rethinking the science-policy nexus: from knowledge 
utilization and science technology studies to types of boundary 
arrangements” Poiesis & Praxis 3(3) 199–215
van Kerkhoff L, 2013, “Knowledge Governance for Sustainable Development: 
A Review” Challenges in Sustainability 1(2) 82–93
Krause R M, 2010, “Policy Innovation, Intergovernmental Relations, and 
the Adoption of Climate Protection Initiatives by U.S. Cities” Journal 
of Urban Affairs 33(1) 45–60
Lorenzen M, 2001, “Localized Learning and Policy: Academic Advice on 
Enhancing Regional Competitiveness through Learning” European Planning 
Studies 9(2) 163–185
Lyall C, Bruce A, Firn J, Firn M, Tait J, 2004, “Assessing end-use 
relevance of public sector research organisations” Research Policy 33(1) 
73–87
Malmberg A, Maskell P, 2006, “Localized Learning Revisited” Growth and 
Change 37(1) 1–18
Meyer M, 2010, “The Rise of the Knowledge Broker” Science Communication 
32(1) 118–127
Morgan K, 1997, “The Learning Region: Institutions, Innovation and 
Regional Renewal” Regional Studies 31(5) 491–503
Moulaert F, Nussbaumer J, 2005, “The social region - Beyond the 
territorial dynamics of the learning economy” European Urban and 
Regional Studies 12(1) 45–64
Moulaert F, Sekia F, 2003, “Territorial Innovation Models: A Critical 
Survey” Regional Studies 37(3) 289–302
Pohl C, 2008, “From Science to Policy through Transdisciplinary 
Research” Environmental Science and Policy II 11(1) 46–53
Slembeck T, 1997, “The Formation of Economic Policy: A 
Cognitive-Evolutionary Approach to Policy-Making” Constitutional 
Political Economy 8(3) 225–254
Storper M, 1997, “Regional economies as relational assets”, in Regional 
World: territorial development in a global economy (Guilford Press., New 
York)
Taylor C, 2015, “Between Culture, Policy and Industry: Modalities of 
Intermediation in the Creative Economy” Regional Studies 49(3) 362–373
Wildavsky A B, 1979 Speaking truth to power: the art and craft of policy 
analysis Little, Brown (Transaction Publishers, Boston, Mass.)
Witt U, 2003, “Economic policy making in evolutionary perspective” 
Journal of Evolutionary Economics 13(2) 77–94