The Rural Sociology Group is looking for a MSc student who is willing to do his/her master thesis research on leadership in 2 Dutch regions in the context of an international comparative research in the spring of 2016.
The central question is how leadership plays a role in rural and metropolitan regional development.
The (preliminary) themes and questions are:
- Firm coming into a region and looking for support – what would leaders do (if anything)?
- Infrastructure needed for local development – what role leadership and which leaders?
- Opposition to central government proposal – would leaders mobilise and how? Which leaders?
- Response to a plant closure.
The MSc student will organize 2 focus groups, in a rural and a metropolitan region with relevant place leaders/economic development professionals.
The research will be undertaken as part of an international case-study research performed by leadership experts in 9 countries: Australia, Finland, England, USA , New Zealand, Italy, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands. In all the cases the same experimental method – vignette analysis – will be applied, to draw out the similarities and differences in responses. The method is based on a paper of Fitzpatrick and Stephens (2015) who applied this method in the context of the treatment of homelessness across 6 European nations.
We look for a social science student who is interested in the topics of leadership, place and regional development.
For more information, please contact Ina Horlings before 14 December.