Epainos Award and Young Regional Scientist Sessions (EAYRS)
The Epainos Award/Young Regional Scientist (EAYRS) Sessions are organized each year at the ERSA Conference, and provide a special platform for paper presentations by young scientists with an in-depth discussion of the papers by senior scholars in the field.
Formal goals
The EAYRS sessions are organized according to the following two principles:
- Offering more time for each presentation, in particular to increase the amount of feedback a young scientist receives on her or his paper, and to provide more opportunity for other young scientists to participate in scientific discussions.
- Assigning specialist senior discussants (typically session chairs), experts in the specific field, to each paper that is presented. They will be asked to provide a written version of their comments, with a level of dedication that is considered normal when writing referee reports for scientific journals. The comments are supposed to be presented in a constructive manner and should be targeted at improving the paper. Suggestions for further research can be a useful complement to a review. A standardized evaluation form with guidelines is made available to the reviewers.
The sessions are primarily targeted to Masters and PhD students, and young scholars of comparable age. Participants should not yet have reached the age of 33 years on 1 September of the year of the conference. In case of multi-authored papers, this age limit applies to all authors. Each individual participant is only allowed to submit one paper (as first author or co-author). None of the authors is supposed to have a senior position at a faculty.
All submissions have to be written in English. Submissions should not already have been submitted to a Journal on the date of 30 April of the year in which the Conference is organized. In case of an excessive number of submissions a pre-selection may be made. Papers that are not accepted for one of the Epainos-sessions will automatically be scheduled in one of the R-sessions of the conference.
Every participant of the Young Scientist Sessions competes for the Epainos Award, which is awarded to the best paper presented in the EAYRS Sessions. The winner will be announced during the conference dinner. The first prize winner will receive € 600. A second prize will also be awarded, comprising € 300. In case of multiple first prize or second prize winning papers, the monetary rewards will be split equally (over papers).
The prize-winning papers will be considered for publication in the flagship journal of the Regional Science Association Internationsl, viz. Papers in Regional Science. Because the paper will be subject to standard review procedures, publication is not guaranteed. The prize winners will also be anounced on the ERSA website and in the ERSA newsletter. The prize winning paper will be made downloadable from the ERSA website.
Those interested in the Young Scientist Session and the Epainos Award can indicate this when submitting their abstract by ticking the relevant box in the electronic registration form. They are explicitly asked to confirm that all authors are aged below 33 and that the paper has not been submitted to a Journal at 30 April.
The full paper should be submitted before 30 April using the standard procedures of paper submission for the conference.
Criteria
The criteria used for assessing the papers have are:
- The paper is conceptually sound
- The work is innovative
- The structure of the paper is logical and efficient
- The style of writing is attractive
- The paper is well-positioned in the literature
- The paper provides a useful contribution to the field of Regional Science
These criteria are included in the standardized evaluation form for reviewers and all reviewers are explicitly asked to score papers on these criteria (on a 1-5 scale). The scores are made available to the Jury members as background information that can assist them in ranking the papers.
Young Regional Scientists Round Table
“The Future of Regional Science”
This panel discussion will be aimed at identifying current major issues and formulating future research agendas in Regional Science, from the viewpoint of young researchers. The panel will be chaired by Dimitris Ballas (University of Sheffield, England) and will comprise young regional scientists who are distinguished researchers (including some of the recent EPAINOS prize winners) and possible emerging future leaders in their field but not part of the "establishment”.
In particular, the participants are as follows:
Nicola Coniglio (University of Bari, Italy),
Ugo Fratesi (Politecnico di Milano, Italy),
Emilia Catalina Istrate (George Mason University, USA),
Piyapong Jiwattanakulpaisarn (Imperial College London, England and Ministry of Transport, Thailand),
Eveline van Leeuwen (Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands),
Declan Jordan (University College Cork, Ireland),
Stamatis Kalogirou (Harokopio University of Athens, Greece),
Karyn Morrissey (Irish Rural Economy Research Centre, Ireland and University of Leeds, England),
Jaakko Simonen (Oulou University, Finland)
Dan Vickers (University of Sheffield, England).
The scientific expertise and research interests of the panel members cover most themes of Regional Science and range from economics of migration and international trade and factor mobility to regional development impacts of transport infrastructure investment, innovation and enterprise policy, Regional Econometrics, regional growth models, Land Use Planning, Spatial Microsimulation, Rural Economic Development, Geographical Information Systems, Geostatistics and Geodemographics.
Each panel member will present their perspectives and reflections on the future of Regional Science and will be asked to identify a number of key research areas and challenges that they think will be of importance in the next 10 to 20 years. The round table will also attempt to link the panel members' different research agendas by identifying common methodological grounds and possible future synergies.