The Croatian Section of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA Croatia) held its conference “EU Regional Development Dialogues: From Policy to Research” at Technology Park Split on 28 and 29 September 2026, under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Croatia. The co-organisers were the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism, University of Split, the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in partnership with the European Commission Representation in Croatia, the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) and the Split Development Agency (RaST).
The UR-WISE team of the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš (FEUN), prof. dr Jelena J. Stanković, UR-WISE project coordinator, Ivana Marjanović and Marina Stanojević, took part in the conference on behalf of the Faculty and of ERSA Serbia, the Serbian section of ERSA that UR-WISE helped to establish.
The first day was given to dialogue between policymakers, practitioners and researchers. The opening plenary panel, “Making sense of regional development and regional policies in the age of uncertainty,” brought together Andrea Conte of the JRC, Aida Liha Matejiček of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), Andrés Rodríguez-Pose of the London School of Economics and Francesco Molica of the European Association of Development Agencies (EURADA), moderated by Blanka Šimundić of the University of Split.
A roundtable on “The future of cohesion policy amid persistent and emerging territorial challenges” followed, and the afternoon closed with a JRC special session on “Industrial transitions and open strategic autonomy: implications for regional development,” with speakers from the universities of Trento and Padua, the Politecnico di Milano, the OECD and the Regional Development Agency Primorje.
The second day was a Regional Science Research Incubator Workshop, organised with RSAI’s Nurturing New Talent Program. It opened with methodological lectures by Özge Öner of the University of Cambridge and Katarzyna Kopczewska of the University of Warsaw, followed by a roundtable of journal editors on publishing regional research that matters. In the workshop itself, nine papers, most of them by early-career scholars, each received pre-publication feedback from a senior researcher acting as discussant.
Establishing a Serbian section of ERSA was one of UR-WISE’s structural objectives for FEUN. The joint application was agreed in Niš in June 2025, ERSA now lists Serbia among its sections, and on 26 June 2026 the Faculty hosted the first conference held under the auspices of ERSA Serbia. Taking part in the conference of the Croatian Section is the next step in that work: it connects the new section with a neighbouring one and with the wider ERSA and RSAI network that both belong to.
More about how UR-WISE supported the founding of ERSA Serbia is in our earlier news on establishing the section and on its first conference in Niš. The full conference programme is published by ERSA.
UR-WISE will continue to connect FEUN and ERSA Serbia with the European regional science community.