Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Institute News
Team member of the institute successfully defended her PhD thesis

Team member of the institute successfully defended her PhD thesis

On 8 June 2020 the institute’s team member Anna-Barbara Heindl successfully defended her PhD thesis on the topic „Regional Disparities and Innovation: Conditions for Innovation Capacity Building in China’s ‘West‘“. In her cumulative dissertation Anna-Barbara Heindl showed that the analytical approach Regional Innovation Systems has to be critically revised using qualitative methods for the case of China: She showed that the approach popular in economic geography needs conceptual development to maintain its explanatory power for the regional dimension of innovation in China, considering its specific instituional conditions.

The PhD defense was moderated by Prof. Peter Dirksmeier. The referees of the dissertation and of the defense were Anna-Barbara Heindl’s supervisor Prof. Ingo Liefner, and Prof. Tobias ten Brink from Jacobs University Bremen. Due to current restrictions (COVID-19), the defense was carried out in a hybrid form of presence and online meeting. The two institute’s referees Liefner and Dirksmeier as well as further nine guests met Anna-Barbara Heindl in room V 309, while the external referee ten Brink and further guests participated in the defense via video call. Despite these challenges the defense was successfully performed without technical problems in a very productive atmosphere.