Rune Dahl Fitjar
Professor of Innovation Studies
UiS Business School
Centre for Innovation Research
University of Stavanger
N-4036 Stavanger
Norway
Email: rune.d.fitjar@uis.no
Tel.: (+47) 51 83 15 62
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Biography
I am Professor of Innovation Studies at the University of Stavanger Business School, a position that I have held since 1 September 2013. I am affiliated with the Centre for Innovation Research, which is a joint venture between the University of Stavanger and the International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS), where I also hold a part-time position.
I trained as a political scientist in Bergen and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), gaining my PhD in Government from LSE in 2007. My thesis was on the drivers of regionalism in Western Europe, and it sought to explain variation in regionalism both across space - using a quantitative analysis across 212 regions - and across time - examining the development of regionalism in Scotland and Rogaland over 40 years. It has since been turned into a book, which was published by Routledge in 2009.
In recent years, my work has continued to focus on different aspects of regions. In 2007, I joined IRIS. During the 2011/2012 academic year, I was a visiting scholar at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
My research deals with different aspects of regions, in recent years mostly related to regional innovation. I am currently involved in two large research projects in the VRI programme at the Research Council of Norway. However, my past research has also included studies of regional identity (e.g. in the context of the petroleum industry in Northern Norway), as well as regional policy-making, both in Norway's relationship with the EU (e.g. through inter-regional networks in the EU, and in an evaluation of the Stavanger region as European Capital of Culture) and in the domestic context (examining the distribution of powers between the central and regional governments in Norway). I also participated in a project on corporate social responsibility in the clothing sector. Findings from these projects are available in the Publications and Working Papers sections on this website.
I currently supervise two PhD students: Marte Cecilie Wilhelmsen Solheim writes her thesis on the role of diversity in innovation processes. Liv Reidun Grimstvedt researches how universities can contribute to regional development and innovation.
Until 2014, I teach Quantitative Research Methods in the bachelor programmes in Sociology and Political Science. From 2015, I will be teaching a new course in Business Innovation in the Master's in Economics and Management at the UiS Business School
In 2014, I was awarded the Lyse Research Prize, which recognizes excellence in research at the University of Stavanger. In 2012, I won the Stavanger Forum Prize for Communication of Research for actively presenting my findings both to an academic and a public audience.
Research Interests
Regionalism, regional development, innovation, regional identity, comparative politics, European politics
Find me online:
Social media:
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Online profiles: Google Scholar - RePEc - UiS - IRIS - Stavanger Centre for Innovation Research
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