Coordinators:

Frank Moulaert (University of, UK), frank.moulaert@ncl.ac.uk

Abdel-Illah Hamdouch (University of Lille 1, France), abdel.hamdouch@univ-lille1.fr

This research area covers the discussions on the role of institutional dynamics in social innovation at the local and regional level. Social innovation is defined in two interrelated ways: innovation in the sense of the social economy, i.e. setting up strategies to satisfy human needs; and innovation in the sense of transforming and/or sustaining social relations, in particular relations of governance at the regional and local level. The combination of both modes of definition leads to a comprehensive approach to innovation in social and economic dynamics within territories.

Today this topic is high up on the research agenda within in a wide range of disciplines in social science: social and institutional economics, planning, social and economic geography, urban sociology and political science.

The objective of the scientific debate in this research area is to promote inter-disciplinary syntheses on the meaning of social innovation at the local level. For 4 consecutive years, special sessions to further these debates have been organized at EAEPE conferences. After an interruption of two years, these sessions will be resumed starting 2004.

Members of research area O participate in a research proposal for a Network of Excellence under FP6. The topic is the variety of pathways leading towards inclusion into the European Knowledge Society. Further information can be obtained from the Research Area coordinator Frank Moulaert, Professor of European Planning and Development, University of Newcastle upon Tyne frank.moulaert@ncl.ac.uk