Universities and Regional Engagement: From the Exceptional to the Everyday

The study of universities' role in regional engagement is reconceived in this book, which proposes a renewed research agenda. It explores how university knowledge agents build connections with regional partners, advancing a novel conceptual framework centered on the process of mundaneness. Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, innovation studies, management and organization studies, and historical perspectives, the book illustrates university-regional engagement as a form of extendable temporary coupling, addressing perennial policy and managerial questions.

Format: Hardback
Length: 226 pages
Publication date: 01 March 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The study of universities' role in regional engagement has traditionally focused on exceptional cases, overlooking the underlying complexity of this phenomenon. This groundbreaking book presents a reconceptualization that embraces the richness of this complexity and offers a comprehensive roadmap for a renewed research agenda.

Beginning at the grassroots level of universities' everyday engagements, the book delves into the myriad ways in which university knowledge agents forge connections with regional partners. Through 11 empirical chapters, the authors not only chart the diversity among case institutions, engagement mechanisms, and regional contexts but also use this diversity to advance a novel conceptual framework, centered on the process of mundaneness, for unpacking university-regions' everyday activities. This framework takes into account the dynamic, complex, and co-evolving interplay between key social agents and institutions, the contexts in which they are embedded, as well as the historical trajectories and strategic ambitions underpinning context-specific social arrangements and interactions that are mediated by temporal and spatial dimensions.

Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, innovation studies, management and organization studies, and historical perspectives, the volume advances a new mode of understanding university-regional engagement as a form of extendable temporary coupling. This approach helps address perennial policy and managerial questions, such as what to do with universities that do not serve local labor market needs or are located in regions suffering from brain drain. The book illustrates such dynamics from diverse national contexts and three continents: Brazil, the Caribbean, China, Italy, Norway, and Poland.

This book is a valuable resource for advanced students, researchers, and policymakers working in economic geography, urban studies, regional development, and higher education. It provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective on the complex dynamics of university-regional engagement, offering insights that will shape future research and policy interventions in this field.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367713072