RSA Early Career Grant holder Iris Wanzenböck shares her research project: Knowledge network dynamics in the presence of shocks: A network-based approach to regional resilience

My project aims at understanding how regional knowledge networks can stimulate regional economic resilience. This ambition is motivated by theories considering knowledge networks crucial for regions to gain, after a crisis, impetus towards renewal. Yet, empirical evidence on the dynamics of knowledge networks, their changing compositions or role for regional resilience is scarce. My project aims at (i) providing new indicators to systematically explore network dynamics, (ii) developing a topology to characterize network profiles for European regions, (iii) assessing how these network compositions relate to regional resilience for the case of the economic crisis in 2008. In this project I will develop regional indicators to capture the micro-based dynamics in network compositions and make use of large-scale network data to classify European regions according to these indicators. On this basis, I will investigate whether network re-bundling can explain regional renewal processes after the crisis

(From Youtube)