Ashleigh Weeden, a PhD Student in the Rural Studies program, has been selected as one of 25 emerging scholars from around the world to participate in the 2019 ERSA/OECD Winter School at the Trento Centre for Local Development in Trento, Italy in January 2019.

As a highly competitive intensive program, the ERSA Winter School, in collaboration with the OECD Spatial Productivity Lab, provides PhD students and young researchers with the very latest advances in regional sciences on the topics of spatial productivity and local development through intensive instruction and collaboration with senior researchers, and internationally recognized analysts. The 2019 Winter School will address the interaction between empirical, theoretical and policy analysis on topics including innovation, place-based development, rural and regional development, knowledge mobilization, and rural-urban linkages.

During the Winter School, Ashleigh will present her research on place-based rural innovation systems and their implications for community development policy and practice in the digital era. Ashleigh’s doctoral research is focused on investigating models of place-based rural innovation systems in order to help identify both common and place-specific drivers for rural community economic development and resiliency in the digital era.

Learn more about Ashleigh and her research by visiting:

• Including Rural in the Innovation Economy
• Profile on the Libro Professorship in Regional Economic Development website
• Profile by the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies