Rethinking Regional Skills: Place-Based Capabilities and Economic Transformation

Call for Papers

Rethinking Regional Skills: Place-Based Capabilities and Economic Transformation

Journal: Regional Studies
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 25 September 2026

Regional Studies invites submissions for its Special Issue titled "Rethinking Regional Skills: Place-Based Capabilities and Economic Transformation."

About the Special Issue

Skills play a vital role in shaping regional development, labour markets, industrial transformation, and long-term economic growth. However, regional skills are often viewed narrowly through the lens of education or human capital, overlooking their dynamic, place-based nature. Rapid technological change, digitalisation, green transitions, and evolving labour markets are transforming regional skill demands and creating new opportunities as well as significant policy challenges.

This Special Issue seeks conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that examine regional skills as context-dependent capabilities emerging from the interactions of individuals, firms, institutions, and local economies. It welcomes research that advances understanding of how skills are developed, adapted, mobilised, and utilised to promote inclusive regional development and economic transformation.

Scope and Topics of Interest

Submissions may address, but are not limited to:

• Regional skills formation, transformation, resilience, and obsolescence

• Skills, education, and labour market dynamics during green and digital transitions

• Drivers and barriers of regional skills transformation

• Skill mismatch and emerging labour markets

• Green jobs, remote work, platform economies, and gig work

• Skills transformation in industrial clusters and regional economies

• Regional labour market transitions and workforce mobility

• Migration, remote skills, and open regional economies

• Low-skill traps, left-behind regions, and carbon-intensive regional transitions

• Vocational education, lifelong learning, and workforce upskilling

• Skills development in emerging and developing economies

• Policy responses to regional skill mismatch and inclusive economic growth

Submission Guidelines

• Abstract Submission Deadline: 12 June 2026

• Manuscript Submission Deadline: 25 September 2026

• Authors should submit an extended abstract (maximum 500 words plus references) via email to the Guest Editor for initial consideration.

• Conceptual, theoretical, empirical, qualitative, quantitative, and case-study submissions are welcome.

• Early-career researchers and scholars from underrepresented regions, including the Global South, are particularly encouraged to submit.

• Full manuscripts should be submitted through the Regional Studies online submission system after abstract approval.

Special Issue Editors

• David Morris — University of Nottingham

• Carlo Corradini — Henley Business School, University of Reading

• Lisa De Propris — University of Birmingham

• Duygu Buyukyazici — London School of Economics and Political Science

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