Kwadwo Atta-Owusu
Førsteamanuensis i innovasjon og regionale studier
Avd. for innovasjon, led. og mark.føring
Bio
Kwadwo obtained his PhD from the University of Stavanger in May, 2021. He holds a master's degree in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Oulu. Prior to pursuing his doctoral studies, he has worked as a research assistant for the HURMOS Project at the University of Oulu.
Kwadwo’s PhD research was part of the EU-funded RUNIN (The Role of Universities in Innovation and Regional Development) Project that ended in February 2021. His research investigated how individual and contextual factors influence academic engagement in regions. He relied on psychological, sociological and organizational theories, and applied mixed methods approach to examine the impact of various factors on external interaction activities of academics. Findings from the research highlighted the importance of individual and regional related factors to regional engagement. It also demonstrated the less important role of university factors relative to the others.
Kwadwo’s current research project examines how political processes shape regional innovation and development policy in European regions. It studies politics within the region and at the national level, including the saliency of diversification issues in party programmes and their relation to broader development policy agendas. It also seeks to identify new political cleavages and how that feed into discontent at places that feel marginalized. A key goal of the project is creating a novel dataset that match political parties manifesto data with regional elections results and other regional level indicators.
