This year marks a major milestone for City-REDI as we celebrate a decade of research, impact, and collaboration. Over the past 10 years, we’ve grown from a bold idea into a leading centre for regional economic development, shaping policy and practice across the UK and beyond.
To mark this anniversary, we’re launching a special blog series that looks back on our journey—highlighting key projects, partnerships, and the people who’ve helped make it all happen.
The next part of our series is from Research Fellow, Dr Magda Cepeda Zorrilla.
In February 2019 I joined City-REDI as a Research Fellow. I brought to the team my knowledge of Transport Behaviour and Sustainable Mobility. When I joined the team I was transitioning from consultancy into a more policy-engaged research environment, which I found fascinating. Overall, I have contributed to work on regional industrial policy and university assets; and projects connecting transport systems and regional development. City-REDI allowed me to work with economists, planners, policy scholars and appreciating different epistemologies and methods. Over these 10 years my role has evolved to bring to City-REDI behavioural science and behavioural diagnosis. In addition I have become involved in policy evaluation too.
Just after my first year at City-REDI, the coronavirus pandemic led to a complete lockdown of cities in the UK, so there was a sudden transition to fully remote work. This was a very memorable moment, to witness how the crisis led to rapid adaptation of stakeholder workshops to online formats, interviews and focus groups online and any training required provided remotely. All this, maintaining team cohesion through virtual catch-ups, virtual coffee sessions and a shared sense of purpose. My biggest learning was that research culture is not about the building, but about the people. In the City-REDI team, the crisis revealed resilience, flexibility, and mutual support. In addition, it also helped to strengthened collaboration skills across digital platforms for all the colleagues.
Over my time at City-REDI, I have been able to observe that in terms of culture and collaboration, the team is open to experimentation and innovation, and projects are policy-engaged and impact-oriented. The members of the team genuinely want each other to succeed, and collaboration is organic, not forced.
City-REDI is a unique place to work because of its multidisciplinarity, having experts in a broad range of areas such as regional economy, environmental economics, linguistics, behaviour change, geography, urban planning, working together with economic and policy analysts. So our projects go from regional industrial strategy to transport behaviour, innovation ecosystems, evaluation frameworks, with a strong regional anchoring and applied impact focus, meaning that our research informs real decisions.
My message to the team is first of all, my appreciation for mentorship and collaboration and my pride in being part of a centre that has grown in visibility and impact over these years. I look forward to continuing to embrace multidisciplinarity, to keep innovating methodologically and to strengthen behavioural and systems approaches in policy.
This blog was written by Dr Magda Cepeda-Zorrilla, Research Fellow, City-REDI, University of Birmingham.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this analysis post are those of the authors and not necessarily those of City-REDI or the University of Birmingham.