New EURA Governing Board members (2015)

After EURA’s successful Board election in Sibiu, we are proud to announce the following incoming Board members:

Returning Candidates

Mervi Ilmonen
Jan Erling Klausen
Paula Russell
Pawel Swianiewicz
Valeria Fedeli
Christian Lefevre
Dubravka Jurlina Alibegovic
Panos Getimis
Cristiana Rossignolo
Bas Denters
Rob Atkinson
Robin Hambleton
Jacob Norvig Larsen
Ivan Tosics

New Candidates:

Francesca Gelli

University IUAV of Venice, Italy

I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science and Scientific coordinator of the Ph.D. program in Regional Planning and Public Policies, Director of the Post-Graduate Specialization Course in Participatory Action Planning and Sustainable Urban Development at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy. In the last academic years I have been several times in the U.S.A. as visiting researcher (at the UCB, CA: Department of City and Regional Planning; Institute of Urban and Regional Planning; University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum; at the Lafayette College, Easton, PA: Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government) and in Germany, as senior research fellow of the Institute für Politikwissenschaft, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gie?en. I taught courses on public policies and active citizenship (at the University of Ca’ Foscari), European public policies and EU initiatives (at the University of Padua), urban policies (at the University of Trento); currently I teach Local Government and Public Administration, Policy Analysis. I am author of books, chapters and articles on urban policies, local politics, democratic theory and federalism, EU and US public policies, qualitative methods of research. I have served as a consultant for several regional and local bodies of government in the design and realization of participatory urban and territorial policies, sustainable local development plans.

In my research work, I see policies as processes of social interaction and practices of use of territory that have an effect on the production and reproduction of common assets. My approach deals with primarily North American and French scientific tradition in urban research and is grounded on a cross-domain perspective.

I would like to be active member of EURA. Specifically, my intent would be to promote an interdisciplinary research network and a comparative research on national urban agendas in the EU and abroad, also focusing on the strategic role that European institutions, like the EC, and international organization (like UN-Habitat, OCSE, etc) are having in opening windows for national urban policy agendas in Third Countries, emerging countries. On this topic I am leading a research team under the new established Italian National Center for the Study of Urban Policies; we are producing several case-studies and policy reports and we aspire to extend our network on an European basis. This topic could be of some interest for EURA annual conferences.

The PhD School in Venice would be glad to support the organization of EURA events – personally, I have some skill as I have been the local organizer of the Italian Political Science Annual Conference (an event which attracted 500 scholars of various nationality, giving papers and being discussants, etc.) and of others academic and cultural events.

  Colin Copus

  De Montfort University, Leicester, England

I am a Professor of Local Politics and Director of the Local Governance Research Unit at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. As a former editor of Local Government Studies, (also published by Taylor and Frances) a role I undertook for 13 years, I would be able to contribute editorial experience, reviewer networks and publishing expertise to the journal Urban Research & Practice and could help to strengthen the journal further. As editor of LGS I successful steered that journal into new journal ranking categories and improved the journal’s impact factor and I would be very willing to contribute to Urban Research & Practice and its development in a similar way.

I have strong international networks and am active within the local government specialist groups of the EGPA (co-convenor of the Local Governance and Democracy Standing Group), ECPR, IPSA (executive board member for RC05 Comparative Studies on Local Government and Politics) and PSA (chair and convenor of the Local Politics Specialist Group). I also have extensive academic networks beyond those organisations to contribute to EURA’s activity and to EURA’s collaboration with others by developing research networks and projects focused on EURA specific interests. I am currently developing two research projects with EURA members which could be expanded into engagement with the wider EURA network.

In addition to academic networks I have strong links with policy-makers and practitioners having been advisor to the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for five years and I worked with the Communities and Local Government Committee as an advisor on two of its inquires. I am also advisor to the Chairman of the Local Government Association and advisor to the District Council Network as well as having extensive networks and experiences of working with local government across the country. I would be able to bring my practitioner and policy-maker networks together with EURA’s work. I would welcome the chance to form and / or chair a EURA working group aimed at developing practitioner and policy-maker relevant work and network development.

Along with colleagues from Sibu and Warsaw Universities I have organised a track for the 2015 conference and will be chairing sessions at the conference. I would be happy to extend that role into involvement in future EURA conferences and in taking part in organising seminars or roundtable events, for EURA members, in between annual conferences to explore research or specific academic and policy-related issues. My Unit at De Montfort University – the Local Governance Research Unit – would also be able to support EURA in its work as well as providing me with specific support for the tasks involved in being a member of the EURA Governing Board.

Marichela Sepe

Italian National Research Council & University of Naples, Italy

I am interested in becoming an active part of EURA. Her research focuses in Urban Design and Planning at the Italian National Research Council. I am also Contract Professor of Contemporary Urban Landscape at the University of Naples.

I’d like to propose my Candidature to become active in the following activities:

• Organising a EURA event (a conference or workshop);
• Initiating a new network activity or taking over the role of a project leader of an existing network activity
• Acting as the editors of the Journal Urban Research & Practice;
• Chair a working group /sub-committee to undertake any specific initiative to further the aims and objectives of EURA;
• Serve on academic committees for EURA conferences, chair conference tracks, and organise conference sessions;
• Promote the journal among  academic and practice networks and promote the journal when at conferences and workshops. Be willing to act as a referee for articles when appropriate;
• Promote EURA as a network among their academic and practice networks, particularly in my own country or wider region.

Ignazio Vinci

University of Palermo, Italy

Ignazio Vinci (1970) is Associate professor of Urban Planning in the Department of Architecture at the University of Palermo, where he is delegate for International mobility of the Polytechnic School and member of the teaching board of the PhD Programme in Arts, Architecture and Planning. His research interests include urban development in Europe and Italy, urban regeneration and local development, innovation in spatial planning and governance. More recently he’s also supervising research projects related to cross-cutting issues such as urban-rural relationship in the urban regions and the role of mobility projects in the regeneration of marginal neighbourhoods.

He has served as consultant for several national and international agencies –including the Italian Ministry of Infrastructures and Ministry of Economic Development and UN-Habitat – in the design, implementation and evaluation of plans and programmes in the fields of urban policy and territorial development. In the last year he has been an advisor for the Italian Agency for Territorial Cohesion in the implementation of the National Programme “Città Metropolitane buy pills online 2014-2020” addressed to the 14 city-region established in 2014.

He has published extensively on urban policy, local development, strategic planning, regionalism, and the territorialisation of EU’s cohesion policy. His last book published is The spatial strategies of Italian regions, Milan, 2014.

In the last academic year he has been visiting lecturer at the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy of the University College of Dublin.

The recent economic crisis has shown how cities retain strategic resources in the creation of more resilient and ecological-oriented societies in the western countries. At the same time, it is clear that an increased knowledge on the complex, and sometimes controversial, processes of change within urban areas are crucial in order to provide up-to-date and more effective perspectives to all the actors responsible for active policies. If elected, it is my intention to work actively in order to strengthening the role of EURA as one of the most influential knowledge provider in the field of urban research and policy in Europe.

One of my wishes is to bring within the EURA’s community a Southern (and in some ways Mediterranean) research perspective, with the aim of further exploring urban change and the performance of urban policy under such a geopolitical conditions. To do so, I will make available my personal research network and I will work actively to promote the EURA’s identity towards new potential partners in these regions. Further sinergies could be reached in this direction with the AESOP, whose current president is a member of my department at the University of Palermo.

As member of the Governing Board, I would like to provide my contribution both in some already established activities of the association – supporting the editing of the EURA Journal and newsletter, contributing as organiser and chair in the EURA events –, as well as promoting activities in new areas. In this regard, I would like to promote the creation of an informal research network on the topic of urban policy in the marginal-converging regions, with the aim of:

• ensuring regularly its presence as organised session within the EURA conferences;
• drafting research applications if funding will be available on the topic;
• providing regular accounts of the network activities in the forms of research report and articles.

Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado

Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain

Sonia is researcher and lecturer in the Department of urban and regional planning (DUYOT) of the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid –UPM-. Her professional experience has been developed in parallel in the field of urban/ architectural practice and in the field of research on urban policies from the beginning of her career.  She has developed her activity as a practitioner working for international architecture offices (Chapman Taylor and L35), focusing on the development of masterplans and mix-use architectural projects in Europe, North Africa, Asia and Central America.  This experience is considered by Sonia as a privileged observatory of urban planning dynamics that have enriched and enhance her scientific interest on these matters.  She has developed her work in the field of research from her years as a student at the School of Architecture of Madrid.  At the beginning in the context of a scholarship from the Ministerio de Educación of Spain and afterwards in the framework of a grant of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri of Italy, which took place in the Laboratorio di Politiche Urbane e Territoriali of the Polithecnic of Milan.   She continued this activity in the context of her Doctorate in DUYOT and her independent research work, which resulted in her PhD Thesis in which she studied the impact of the Urban Policy of the European Union in Spain.  She has also been researcher in CEDEX, the Centre of Research of the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, and visitor researcher in the European Institute for Urban Affairs (University John Moores of Liverpool) and in the Boku University (Vienna).  In the development of her research activity she has participated in European and national research projects, some of which have been coordinated and leaded by her and have resulted in published articles and books.  Sonia has a good level of English and Italian.

She participates frequently in high-level conferences and publishes research in Spanish and international journals.  From 2011 she is member of the Technical Committee of the Spanish National Conference on Environment (CONAMA) and from 2015 of the Working Group of the Ministry of Finance that is working in the Urban Agenda for Spain.  She is Management Committee member of COST Action TN1201, genderSTE (gender, science, technology and environment), and was substitute Management Committee member of COST Action TU0902 “Integrated assessment technologies to support the sustainable development of urban areas”, in which she was responsible of the work of WG4 in the context of urban regeneration, and the work of WG2 regarding climate governance.  Her research work focuses on integrated urban regeneration in the EU and Spain, local climate change and mobility, and the gender dimension of these urban policies.

Sonia proposes to contribute to EURA disseminating its activity in Spain.  Regarding this, she would like to join the group organizing the EUROLOC/EURA summer schools, with the aim of organizing one of its future activities in her country.  She is also interested in collaborating in existing networks within EURA and in the framework of the editing work of the Journal Urban Research & Practice.

Filipe Teles

University of Aveiro, Portugal

I have the intention of becoming a member of EURA and I am willing to contribute with my expertise, academic networks and institutional responsibilities at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, to the development of EURA aims.

I am a professor of political science at the Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences – University of Aveiro, where I teach several courses in the fields of Public Administration and Local Governance. I am, since April 2014, the Pro-rector for regional development of the University of Aveiro.

I hold a PhD in Political Science and I am a member of the Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policy (GOVCOPP), where I develop research work on governance and local administration, territorial reform, political leadership and collaboration.

I also collaborated, as Visiting Professor and Member of the Board, in the design of a Master in Public Administration at the Portuguese Catholic University – Porto, having also been Visiting Professor at EGP-University of Porto Business School. I was Deputy Director of the Master’s Program in Public Administration and Management, at the University of Aveiro and Member of the Board of the Research Unit (GOVCOPP). I collaborated in the preparation of the scientific and pedagogical project of the Doctoral Program in Public Policy and the Doctoral Program in Political Science, University of Aveiro, approved by the National Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education.

I participate in several national and international projects and published several articles in international journals of reference (eg Local Government Studies, European Urban and Regional Studies, Political Studies Review, International Journal of Public Administration, Space and Polity) as well as books, book chapters, reports and policy papers.

I am also a member of the Advisory Board of the Forum for Integrated Governance of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and I have also been active as a consultant and trainer in the European Environmental Agency and the European Securities and Markets Authority, and other international entities.

I am a member of the Portuguese Association of Political Science, the Political Studies Association (UK), and the International Political Science Association.

Marta Lackowska

University of Warsaw, Poland

Marta Lackowska is being nominated as the candidate to take over from Pawel Swianiewicz, when he steps down from the Governing Board within the next two years.