Carolina Castaldi (April 2026 - June 2026)
Professor (Chair) in Geography of Innovation at Utrecht University
My research
My research deals with innovation processes and how they unfold over time and space. I am interested in all forms of innovation, not only technological but also institutional, organizational, social. I am keen in understanding how innovation creates value or instead acts as a burden for places and communities.
IAS Fellowship
My central question is: how can we reimagine geographies of innovation?
Emerging counter-narratives and empirical efforts critically challenge the dominant stylized facts about where innovation emerges and where it generates impact. I wish to rethink theories, reassess evidence and redraw maps of innovation. The ambition is to demonstrate that different types of innovation emerge in more places than expected and to analyze the complex ways, both positive and negative ones, in which innovation affects places.
The current geopolitical context has brought back a focus on technology in innovation policy. Against this background I wish to resist techno-optimism and technological obsession by reminding that innovation is more than technology and that places can breed different forms of innovation.
I have already done theoretical and empirical research in this direction but I wish to expand these ideas further. I am also keen to interact with artists to explore original ways to think about designing and drawing a new Atlas of innovation.