Franziska Sielker is has been awarded a Newton International Fellowship for a two-year post-doctoral project at the University of Cambridge starting from March 2017. Prof. Phil Allmendinger is the host with the Department of Land Economy.

Franziskas project ‘POWER IN PLANNING – Stakeholders Choice of Power Channels in EU Sector Policies’ aims to analyse the ways how EU directives are implemented in different national contexts, and how in large-scale cooperation stakeholders influence the process.

The objective is to scrutinize stakeholders’ choices of different ‘power channels’ as ways to influence processes of planning in sectoral policies. Empirically the project intends to address two EU sectoral policies: The EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive is the newest regulatory, legal framework that influences planning. By contrast, EU transport policy offers financial incentives in relation to national decision-making. The case study regions are the North Sea Region, the Alpine Region and the Danube Region.

The Newton International Fellowships scheme is run by the British Academy and the Royal Society. The Fellowship supports early stage post-doctoral researchers for two years at a UK research Institution to conduct a research project. The long-term aim of the scheme is to build a global pool of research leaders with long-term international collaboration with the UK.

Franziska recently finalized her dissertation at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg on macro-regional strategies, in particular the Danube and Alpine regions (‘Macro-regional integration – New scales, spaces and governance for Europe?’) supported by a DAAD Jahresstipendium für DoktorandInnen. Before joining Tobias Chilla’s Team she studied Spatial Planning at the TU Dortmund University. Before finishing her studies, she served a traineeship at the ESPON Coordination Unit in Luxemburg and obtained a DAAD scholarship to prepare her diploma thesis on the macro‐regional strategy for the Danube region at the TU Vienna.

During her fellowship, Franziska will remain engaged in European projects of the Erlangen team.