On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Institute for Regional Studies, the HUN-REN KRTK organised a three-day event series in May 2024 entitled “Regional and Rural Development Trends over the last Forty Years”, with the 10th Village Conference on the first day and the international “RKK40” anniversary conference in English on the second and third days. The series of events was both retrospective and prospective, but with a greater emphasis on a strategic approach, with participants including prominent policy-makers, practitioners and researchers from home and abroad.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Institute of Regional Studies, the HUN-REN KRTK organised a three-day event series in May 2024, which was held in the Granary Visitor Centre of the Bishopric of Pécs. On 28 May 2024, the first day of the event series, the Village Conference was held for the tenth time since its launch in 1991. The event attracted 88 speakers and 150 participants. Viktor Varjú, Director of the RKI, first welcomed the guests at the opening of the experts’ meeting, followed by a plenary session entitled “Crises and ways out in the Hungarian countryside – experiences of the past 40 years”, which featured presentations by two renowned policy experts. The first presentation was given by Mátyás Szabó, Policy Officer of the European Commission, who addressed the topics of demographic transition, depopulation, social inclusion and the EU framework for rural development in view of the 20th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to the EU. The second speaker at the plenary session was Gábor Mayer, State Secretary for Spatial Development, who addressed the issue of spatial policy for small and medium-sized municipalities. The plenary session was followed by the launch of the Territorial Report 2023, which was published at the end of 2023 and recently made available in print. Bálint Koós, editor-in-chief of the volume, presented the background to the publication, its structure and future directions for further development.
The rest of the conference continued in five rooms and thirteen sessions. The key themes were inclusion, adaptation, prosperity and sustainability. In a round table discussion on the links between endogenous resources and development methods and sustainable management patterns, participants explored the current challenges and opportunities for catching up in underdeveloped rural areas through the examples of some forward-looking initiatives.
On the second and third days of the event, the Institute of Regional Studies held an international conference in English to celebrate its fortieth anniversary. This conference was partly supported by the Regional Studies Association. The opening plenary session featured a line-up of distinguished speakers. Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Public Administration and Regional Development, was the guest of the conference and gave a presentation on the past decades of Hungarian regional development, the current challenges and policy responses. Looking ahead to the future of Hungarian regional development policy, the minister highlighted three main pillars. Firstly, the place-based approach, the role of functional zones across administrative borders, secondly, the renewal of the funding system and thirdly, the renewal of the institutional system to reach the people. The second speaker of the plenary session was Roland Jakab, CEO of HUN-REN, who gave an overview of the current state of the research network and the current developments affecting the network. Following the CEO, Imre Fertő, Director General of HUN-REN CERS, gave a presentation on the mission of the research centre and the impact of the research work carried out within its framework.
This was followed by a presentation by Franziska Sielker, lecturer at the Technische Universität Wien and the University of Cambridge, on cross-border cooperation between cities and regions in a European perspective. Fifthly, James W. Scott, Professor at the University of Eastern Finland and external collaborator of the HUN-REN CERS IRS, gave a presentation on “Tracing multifarious links between borders, geopolitics and geographical imaginations”. In it, he presented the work of the Border Research Group of the IRS, the different interpretations of borders and their significance in the space covered by European integration. Last but not least, József Benedek, Professor at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, presented his latest findings in localising Sustainable Development Goals indicators. His research focused on the measurement, visualisation and monitoring of the SDGs, developing innovative monitoring methods and GIS tools.
During the first day of the anniversary conference, sessions were held in four different venues, followed by a roundtable discussion to conclude the day’s technical programme. The topic was the re-industrialisation of developed and peripheral regions of Hungary, which was discussed by the participating experts through the examples of Győr and Pécs.
The conference featured a total of twelve main sessions, with ninety speakers presenting their research. The sessions were structured around a few well-defined themes. The main themes of the programme were mainly related to environmental, economic and social sustainability, cross-border cooperation and small-scale, grassroots development initiatives.
The anniversary conference was both retrospective and forward-looking, but with a greater emphasis on a strategic approach. The diverse mix of invited guests reflected the openness of the Institute to policy-makers at national and even EU level, as well as to the national and international research community, including those from the Carpathian Basin. As was stated several times at the conference, many of the permanent challenges in the field of regional science have not yet been solved, and thus, even beyond the next 40 years, a wide range of research directions will continue to emerge for the regional scientists’ community. The RKK40Conference Abstractbook is available online.
Websites of the conferences:
Author: Zsuzsanna Zsiból, senior research fellow
