David Morris, University of Nottingham

Carlo Corradini, University of Reading

Lisa De Propris, University of Birmingham

Duygu Buyukyazici, London School of Economics and Political Science

Skills are central to regional development, influencing labour markets, industrial evolution, and economic trajectories. Yet despite their long-standing recognition, regional skills are often under-theorised and frequently conflated with education, human capital, or occupational structures. Conceptual frameworks that treat skills as multidimensional, place-based capabilities that emerge from the interactions of people, firms, and local institutions remain limited, and systematic empirical evidence on skill formation, mismatch, mobility, and utilisation across regions is still sparse. Meanwhile, rapid skill-biased technological change, digitalisation, and green transitions are reshaping jobs, tasks, and production systems, altering regional skill demands, reinforcing divergence in development paths, and raising urgent policy questions.

Building on emerging conceptual and empirical work, this Special Issue seeks to advance understanding of regional skills as active, context-dependent capabilities, and their role in economic transformation. We invite conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that explore how regional skills are formed, adapted, deployed, and leveraged to support regional development, labour market inclusion, and industrial transformation. Submissions may address advanced, emerging, and developing economies, and analyses may cover sub-regional to supra-regional scales.

The Special Issue encourages early-career researchers and scholars from underrepresented regions, including the Global South, to submit contributions. We welcome both qualitative and quantitative studies, conceptual and theoretical analyses, as well as case studies that provide new insights into the formation and utilisation of regional skills. All submissions should ground their analysis in place-based contexts and address implications for theory, practice, or policy.

Potential topics

• The nature and dynamics of regional skills formation and transformation due to technological change (skills creation, resilience, obsolescence, disappearance)
• The links between education, skills transformation and job dynamics in the green and digital transitions of regional economies
• The drivers and barriers of a regional skills transition for the innovation, growth and resilience of regional economies
• The regional skill mismatch and skill formation in new labour spaces, e.g. green jobs, remote working, new platformised digital industries, gig economy
• The enablers and barriers of a regional skills transformation for the green and digital transitions of industrial clusters and regional economies
• Regional skills transformation and mismatch within shifting regional labour markets
• Regional skills transformation and mismatch in regions as open economies: skills mobility, remote skills and migration
• The opportunities and constraints of stranded and stressed regions: left-behindedness, regional low-skill traps, transitioning carbon-intensive regions
• The links between vocational education, lifelong training and on-the-job upskilling and regional skills transition in the context of technological change
• The opportunities and constraints of regional skills transition in emerging and developing economies
• Policy debates and policy experiences to address the regional dimension of skill mismatch, skill formation and skill transition for just and inclusive growth

Timeline

• June 12, 2026: Abstract deadline
• September 25, 2026: Manuscript deadline