Cañada Blanch Fellows' Workshop Winter Term 2025-6

Each term, the Cañada-Blanch Centre at LSE organises a Fellows' Workshop, where the visiting LSE-Miguel Dols Fellows present their research projects that they have worked on during their stay at the School.

Meet our fellows 

Dr. Rudy Fernández Escobedo, Research Fellow at the University of Galway (Ireland) 

Mapping the Geography of the Digital Economy: Agglomeration and Territorial Divergence in Europe 

This work-in-progress examines the spatial distribution of digital sector employment across 1,318 NUTS-3 regions in the EU-27 and the United Kingdom between 2016 and 2023. Using a firm-level panel of 1.9 million establishments from the Orbis database (Bureau van Dijk), we compute Location Quotients across 27 NACE-4 digital industries spanning ICT services, high-tech manufacturing, software publishing, and R&D activities. The results reveal persistent spatial concentration of digital employment in Nordic, Atlantic, and selected Central European regions. Despite substantial employment growth over the 2016–2023 period, digital activity remains strongly clustered, suggesting that digital transformation reinforces existing territorial hierarchies rather than diffusing evenly across European regions.

Alessio Costanzo Fedele, PhD candidate at the University of Chieti-Pescara "G. d'Annunzio" (Italy)  

Institutional Quality and the Absorption of EU Funds: A Comparative Spatial Analysis of Cohesion Policy and RRF in Italy and Spain 

This study investigates the interaction between institutional quality (EQI) and regional spending capacity, analyzing the effects of the transition from the place-based model of the 2014-2020 Cohesion Policy to the centralized model of the NRRP on past administrative inefficiencies in Italy and Spain. Through a preliminary bivariate diagnostic phase to validate the EQI as a proxy for historical performance, the research adopts a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to test four key hypotheses: path-dependency, administrative saturation, sectorality and spatial spillovers. The approach aims to isolate the effect of institutional bottlenecks from socioeconomic factors, providing new evidence on territorial resilience and the future of multilevel governance in Europe.

Dr. Susanne Frick, Lecturer in Economic Geography at Cardiff University (UK) 

State development banks and the spatial diffusion of finance 

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in SDBs in light of the global financial crisis and industrial policies coming back into fashion, with an emphasis on how state development banks can contribute to address the grand challenges of our time. However, so far there has been little concern for the question of regional inequalities. This is a surprising omission given that many SDBs have historically included regional development among their core mandates and continue to do so today. Furthermore, differences in access to finance across regions have come into focus as an important, but not well understood, driver of these within country inequalities. This paper aims to address this gap. First, we explore the conceptual arguments for SDB intervention in promoting access to finance in lagging regions, and second, we analyse three case studies, namely KfW in Germany, BPI in France and EIB at the European Level. We argue that conceptually SDB intervention could be warranted due to informational failures related to financing decisions, higher social than financial returns and the presence of positive externalities due to agglomeration economies. In practice, SDBs follow different approaches: while KfW does not have an explicit mandate for regional development, its plays an important role for capitalizing local and regional banks; BPI France in contrast is explicit about the regional dimension of its operations, hence implicitly recognizing its role for facilitating access to finance in regions; and finally, EIB has a very clear regional mandate, assigning an explicit share of its financing volume to cohesion regions.

Iago Mora Arcas, PhD candidate at King's College London (UK) 

Transnational connections in times of change. Queer activist networks during the Spanish Transition to democracy (1976-1982) 

For the last two decades, a strand of scholarship has sought to reassess the Spanish Transition to democracy “from below”, looking at the major role played in it by the civil society and social movements. This presentation will look at this context through the understudied perspective of queer movements, which formed transnational networks across several continents to support the efforts of gay activists in pushing for democratic change. It will also discuss previously unpublished documents on the Spanish political context by Swedish, French and British groups from the 1970s.

Eleni Oikonomaki, PhD candidate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) 

LID Framework: A new method for geospatial and exploratory data analysis of potential innovation determinants at the neighborhood level 

The geography of innovation provides a framework for understanding how territorial characteristics are associated with the generation of innovation, often through the lenses of spatial and cognitive proximity. Within this literature, there is a notable empirical bias toward national and regional units, with urban and sub-regional geographies receiving comparatively less analytical attention. Existing local-level studies typically focus on a limited set of indicators (e.g., firm-level data, patents, and basic socioeconomic characteristics), with few offering a systematic, replicable framework that integrates proxies across diverse aspects at the neighborhood scale. In recent years, emerging forms of open-source and alternative data have opened new opportunities for researchers to explore innovation dynamics at finer spatial scales, including metropolitan, urban, and even neighborhood levels.  The study conducts an empirical investigation of innovation, focusing on a finer spatial scale than the periphery or city boundaries, and exploring metrics beyond proprietary data. It builds the Local Innovation Determinants (LID) database and methodological framework to uncover key enabling factors of innovation across diverse regions in the US, combining well-established and alternative (newly introduced) territorial enabling factors, complementing traditional data from governmental agencies with publicly available data through modern APIs to obtain a more granular and broader understanding of the spatial dynamics that shape innovation capacity at a finer spatial scale. It uses exploratory big data and geospatial analytics, along with random forest and other machine learning models, to identify significant variables across four dimensions across neighborhoods in the US. The findings indicate that alternative data sources have significant yet underexplored potential to enhance our understanding of innovation dynamics. By highlighting the spatial heterogeneity of innovation processes, the study illustrates how advanced GIS approaches can enhance urban innovation research and support spatially targeted local innovation policy and urban regeneration design. It aims to advance our understanding of the key enabling factors and distinctive characteristics of individual neighborhoods that city policymakers should carefully consider when formulating and implementing neighborhood-level innovation policies.

Dr. Robert Pollock, visiting scholar at the College of Europe (Belgium) 

Just Transition in a time of uncertainty: Creating new industrial paths or political discontent? 

Scotland and Spain have adopted geographically focused approaches to Just Transition, particularly regarding oil and gas phase-out in North-Eastern Scotland and coal phase-out in Asturias. Moreover, both countries have created innovative institutions to facilitate Just Transition at the national and regional levels. The research analyses the role of these institutions in relation to phasing-in new green industrial paths to compensate for the economic and social consequences of energy transition in the two noted regions. Additionally, the relationship between the phasing-in of these new green industrial paths and the rise of populist parties is considered.       

Kaia Sollie, PhD candidate at the London School of Economics (UK) 

“Leather in the blood”: Rural economic development in the Sierra de Cádiz 

This presentation examines how "Jacinas", a village in the Andalusian Sierra producing leather goods, sustains economic vitality and social cohesion through a powerful discourse of village exceptionalism and geographically grounded artisanal knowledge. The presentation critically explores the exclusionary dimensions of this model and its implications for how rural development theory understands the relationship between cultural identity and economic sustainability.

Anna Solms, PhD candidate at the Halle Institute of Economic Research (Germany) 

Refugee Inflows and Regional Adjustment in an Ageing Economy - A Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis 

This paper studies how labor-supply shocks interact with regional demographic heterogeneity in ageing economies. I employ a dynamic multi-regional general equilibrium model with age cohorts, forward-looking migration, trade linkages, and endogenous capital accumulation. Embedding region-specific demographics and labor market conditions, the model allows a national labor-supply shock to generate heterogeneous regional and intergenerational outcomes. Calibrated to German federal states and applied to the 2015 refugee inflow, the analysis shows modest aggregate GDP gains but substantial regional variation. GDP and capital stocks rise everywhere, while employment effects differ due to internal migration: some regions gain workers, others lose them. Transitional dynamics and initial wealth shape output and welfare outcomes. Younger and middle-aged workers face small welfare losses, while capital owners benefit from higher returns, generating a modest redistribution from labor to capital. Older regions experience smaller worker welfare losses but also weaker capital gains. Overall, migration reinforces agglomeration and capital deepening, supporting aggregate growth, yet adjustment dynamics produce heterogeneous regional and intergenerational effects.

Ioana-Maria Ursache, PhD candidate at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi (Romania)

What Drives Regional Digitalisation? Understanding Digital Inequalities Across the EU

Genghao Zhang, PhD candidate at the University of Bristol (UK)

Demand for AI Skills: Relatedness-complementarity as a driver for regional diffusion and concentration

Demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unevenly distributed across regions. On the one hand, labour economics suggest that company-internal resources determine demand for AI skills. On the other hand, evolutionary economic geography demonstrates that technological relatedness density shapes such regional demand. Reconciling this theoretical debate, our multi-scale study employs 2016-2024 online job advertisements (OJA) data to further develop the measurement of skill relatedness density of AI-complementary and AI-related skills. Then, we statistically justify that a skill relatedness-complementarity framework can explain the generation and spatial concentration of the company demand for AI skills in regional labour markets in Great Britain.

Tao Zou, PhD candidate at King's College London (UK) 

Global Value Chain Reconfiguration under US-China Geopolitical Tension: Buyer-Supplier Relationship Transformation in Vietnam's Triangular Trade

How does the US-China trade war reshape supply chain relationships, through simple trade diversion, or deeper restructuring? Using 34 million transaction-level shipment records covering Triangular firms' imports from China, exports to the US, and local sourcing in Vietnam, we track how buyer-supplier networks reconfigure under geopolitical pressure. Three findings emerge. First, the trade expansion through Vietnam reflects value-added processing, not transshipment. Second, Chinese supplier networks expand before US buyer networks. Firms secure inputs first, then commit to export relationships once policy stabilises. Third, local sourcing complements rather than replaces Chinese intermediates, and mainly in sectors where Vietnam has built domestic production capacity.

Meet our chair

Prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is the Princesa de Asturias Chair and a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics. He is the Director of the LSE Cañada Blanch Centre. He was formerly the Head of the LSE's Department of Geography and Environment between 2006 and 2009. He was formerly the President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) (2015-2017) and served as Vice-President of the RSAI in 2014. He was also Vice-President (2012-2013) and Secretary (2001-2005) of the European Regional Science Association.

More about this event 

The Cañada Blanch Centre at LSE sets out to achieve the Fundación Cañada Blanch's goal of developing and reinforcing links between the United Kingdom and Spain. This is done by fostering cutting-edge knowledge generation and undertaking joint research projects between researchers in the United Kingdom and the LSE on the one hand, and Spain on the other hand.

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