James Hopkins

BA (Hons) History & Politics, University of Nottingham, 2001.
MA International Studies, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2002.

Between Researchers and Users - the Regional Studies Association as a learned society, 1965-2005.

Supervisors: Prof. Michael Hebbert and Cecilia Wong.

Background

In 1964 Professor Walter Isard, founder of the Regional Science Association, was invited to the London School of Economics where he spoke on ‘The International Situation in Regional Science’. The visit prompted a diverse group of British academic and practitioners - economists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, engineers, architects and town planners - to set up their own organisation, the Regional Studies Association.

Michael Wise (1989) has provided a definitive account of the pre-history of the Association, tracing the intellectual networks of its founding members and the epistemological origins of their regionalism in the work of Mumford, Geddes and Le Play. Like the Regional Science Association founded a decade earlier at the University of Pennsylvania, the British initiative was a reaction against the neglect of space within mainstream post-war social science. Unlike its U.S. counterpart it was not just a scientific society but aimed at knowledge transfer and a policy-shaping role, at first within the United Kingdom, and later on a European scale.

Both organisations continue to flourish, but whereas the Regional Science Association International has attracted a healthy critical bibliography, no scholarly study has ever been made of the Regional Studies Association. This project will address this gap in the literature.

The project will take up the story where Wise left off, covering the Association’s growth and development since 1965, its adaptation to the changing knowledge environment, and the pursuit of its two charitable objects, “to promote education in the field of regional studies (those studies which relate to the economic, physical and sociological problems of development in major areas) by the exchange of ideas and information” and “to stimulate and aid studies and research into regional planning, development and functions and to disseminate the results of such research”.

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework for this project has two dimensions. First, it contributes to the history of science through a case study of a learned society, situated within the literature on other scientific societies and their roles in reinforcing and sustaining intellectual identity within and across discipline boundaries. The dissemination role of learned society journals is an important factor, especially in the turbulence of the digital publishing revolution. So too is the charity trusteeship of learned societies’ governing bodies, and their responsibility for the economic fortunes of these non-profit voluntary organisations. Second, the study will be contextualised within the changing regional question in an era of globalisation and European integration. Over the lifetime of the organisation the meaning of its charitable objects - ‘regional planning, development and functions’ - has changed fundamentally, as have the underlying disciplines of ‘regional studies’: economics, geography, spatial economic analysis and political science.

Primary sources

• the Association’s historical archive, located in BLPES
• associated papers in private collections
• documentation in the Association’s office in Seaford
• interviews with key members and contributors from all stages of its history
• interviews with external observers in cognate fields, e.g. regional science
• contributor and content profiles of the Association’s newsletter Regions and its two journals Regional Studies and Spatial Economic Analysis

Funding

ESRC CASE studentship with the Regional Studies Association.